terms of service

plural noun

: the legal terms (see term entry 1 sense 4) that set forth the nature, scope, and limits of a service (such as one offered through a website or an app) and the rules that the service's users must agree to follow

… Twitter users' complaints alerted the company that three of his messages violated the terms of service …

—Jake Tapper

… most people have no idea what is signed away when they click "agree" to binding terms of service contracts—again and again on phones, laptops, tablets, watches, e-readers and televisions.

—The New York Times

—abbreviation TOS

Examples of terms of service in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Google told the court that users consented to data transfers via the company's terms of service and privacy policies and argued that no Android users were harmed. —James Bickerton, MSNBC Newsweek, 3 July 2025

Consent must be separate from other agreements and may not be bundled with terms of service or other privacy acknowledgments. —Alonzo Martinez, Forbes.com, 27 June 2025

People also tend not to read terms of service documents. —Christopher Ramezan, The Conversation, 12 June 2025

The video-sharing platform has since removed the video for violating its terms of service. —Alexandria Burris, IndyStar, 4 July 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1994, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for terms of service

• interservice
• disservice
• preservice
• nervous
• nervus