monopoly
noun
Helen M. LyndBarbara A. Leitch
Did you know?
You're probably familiar with the word monopoly, but you may not recognize its conceptual and linguistic relative, the much rarer oligopsony. Both monopoly and oligopsony are ultimately from Greek, although monopoly passed through Latin before being adopted into English. Monopoly comes from the Greek prefix mono-, which means "one," and pōlein, "to sell." Oligopsony derives from the combining form olig-, meaning "few," and the Greek noun opsōnia—"the purchase of victuals"—which is ultimately from the combination of opson, "food," and ōneisthai, "to buy." It makes sense, then, that oligopsony refers to a buyer's market in which the seller is subjected to the potential demands of a limited pool of buyers. Another related word is monopsony, used for a more extreme oligopsony in which there is only a single buyer.
Examples of monopoly in a Sentence
Ethan Baron, The Mercury News, 10 Nov. 2024
Boeing bungled its recent mission to ferry astronauts to the ISS so badly that SpaceX has at least a temporary monopoly over astronaut launches from American soil.
—Marina Koren, The Atlantic, 5 Nov. 2024
The first credit card company was built by a bank but later split off to avoid being a monopoly.
—Dustin Eide, Rolling Stone, 5 Nov. 2024
Perhaps a prime example of a very lengthy monopoly is the arthritis drug Enbrel (etanercept), which was first approved by the FDA in 1998.
—Joshua P. Cohen, Forbes, 4 Nov. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Monopoly.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly. Accessed 23 Nov. 2024.
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