marketplace
Americannoun
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a place where a public market is held
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any centre where ideas, opinions, etc, are exchanged
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the commercial world of buying and selling
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of marketplace
Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400; see origin at market, place
Explanation
A marketplace is a location where people buy goods. When you travel to a new city, you should visit a marketplace to purchase souvenirs for your friends back home. Marketplace often describes an outdoor market where vendors sell produce, meat, crafts, and other goods. Depending where you are, a marketplace might be called a bazaar, a palengke, or a souk. A more general meaning is an economic system or market, or simply the everyday world where things get bought and sold. You should probably test your new lasagna-flavored ice cream in the marketplace to see if anyone will want to buy it!
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The online marketplace operator’s third-quarter net income rose to $853.5 million, or $7.31 a share, up from $75.5 million, or 63 cents a share, a year ago.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026
“I think we’ll actually be able to re-accelerate the Instacart marketplace, and I actually think that they’ll help us grow a lot of the first party software products for grocers and retailers.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2026
Etsy sold Depop, a second-hand clothing marketplace, to eBay earlier this year, which was classified as discontinued operations in the results.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2026
Sales of used EVs were up 21% in September compared with a year ago, according to wholesale auto marketplace Manheim, and the average listing price was about $36,700.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 27, 2026
For a brief moment, she thought of the old woman from the marketplace, what she’d said about magic.
From "Beasts of Prey" by Ayana Gray
The companies have their own built-in observability offerings, he noted, but they also resell Datadog’s software in their marketplaces.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2026
The median increase in the cost of mid-tier health-insurance premiums sold on Healthcare.gov or through state marketplaces is 13% in 2027, according to KFF.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2026
PSA said it was taking measures to prevent the stolen cards from circulating through the usual venues and marketplaces while also reimbursing card owners for at least a portion of their losses.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2026
“Almost all of the internet marketplaces either have a very large advertising business or plan to build one over time,” said Josh Beck, a tech analyst at Raymond James.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 23, 2026
Along with the crops, they were useful commodities in the marketplaces of each city in the trade networks initially established by the Toltecs.
From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
