red ink

1. 1.

   the amount by which the cost of a business exceeds its revenue

   “the company operated at a loss last year”

   “the company operated in the red last year”

   Synonymslossred

   Broadersum

   Narrowerpaper losssqueeze

Questions about red ink

What does red ink mean?

red ink means "the amount by which the cost of a business exceeds its revenue".

What is another word for red ink?

Close synonyms include loss, red. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is red ink a common word?

red ink is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.