Balancing or compensating for something by providing an equivalent opposite effect; canceling out one influence with another of equal but opposite force.
From 'offset,' originally a printing term meaning 'to set off to one side,' from 'off' and 'set.' The balancing sense developed in the 19th century from accounting, where debits offset credits.
Offsetting is like being on a perfectly balanced seesaw—what goes down on one side goes up on the other, keeping everything level! It's different from counteracting because it implies equal and opposite forces achieving balance.
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