entrepreneurial

American  

[ahn-truh-pruh-nur-ee-uhl, -noor-] / ˌɑn trə prəˈnɜr i əl, -ˈnʊər- /

adjective

1. of or relating to a business or endeavor, especially one that involves considerable individual initiative and risk.

   The article highlights what some cities are doing to promote entrepreneurial development.

   Innovation, when combined with an entrepreneurial streak, can be a powerful catalyst for economic growth.

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Other Word Forms

• entrepreneurialism
  noun
• entrepreneurially
  adverb
• entrepreneurism
  noun
• nonentrepreneurial
  adjective
• semientrepreneurial
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of entrepreneurial

entrepreneur ( def. ) + -ial ( def. )

Explanation

You can call someone willing to take financial risks in new ventures entrepreneurial. Caught up in the entrepreneurial spirit, you felt like a modern-day pioneer braving the wild frontier of business. Then you ran out of lemonade. Entrepreneurial is the adjective form of the noun "entrepreneur," someone investing in risky financial situations. The base noun can be traced to the Latin prendere, "to take," and the 19th Century French entrepreneur, "one who undertakes or manages." It often involves a risky undertaking, however, including the possibility of losing everything. The 19th-Century English Physicist Michael Faraday once broke it down this way: “The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication.”

Example Sentences

Entrepreneurial students have found huge demand for alternate matchmaking tools.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 10, 2026

“I did like the setting,” said Greif, who founded the Marshall School’s Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

From Los Angeles Times • May 16, 2025

Entrepreneurial slime makers have boasted six-figure monthly revenue streams from online sales, and there have been reports of underground slime markets popping up in the stalls of elementary school bathrooms.

From Washington Post • Jun. 30, 2022

“The IRS has been clear,” says Meredith Tucker, who leads the Entrepreneurial Services Group at accounting firm Kaufman Rossin in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

From Seattle Times • Feb. 11, 2022

Nice Day evolved from a location of Junzi, a group of stylish fast-casual Northern Chinese restaurants developed at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute.

From New York Times • Aug. 25, 2020