Other forms: offsets, offsetting
To offset is to balance one thing against another so they cancel out. Offset the cost, carbon offsets, offset by savings.
In accounting it means setting a loss against a gain. Carbon offsetting is the contested version: paying for a reduction elsewhere to cancel your own emissions, which works only if the reduction would not have happened anyway, and often it would.
1verboffsetTo balance one thing against another so they cancel out.
“The higher rent was offset by the money we saved on travel.”
offset is a balancing.
Off plus set, on the model of the phrase set off, meaning to balance one thing against another.
Middle English
setten
English
set
English, today
offset
Built from
From off + set, used to construct the noun form of the verb set off. Compare Middle English ofsetten (“to encumber, harass, beset, besiege”), from Old English ofsettan (“to press, oppress, overwhelm, crush”). set comes from Middle English setten. From Middle English setten, from Old English settan, from Proto-West Germanic sattjan, from Proto-Germanic satjaną, from Proto-Indo-European sodéyeti, causative of sed- (“to sit”). Cognate with Dutch zetten, German setzen, Danish sætte, Norwegian Bokmål sette, Icelandic and Norwegian Nynorsk setja, Swedish sätta, Faroese seta.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA