private enterprise

noun

1. free enterprise.

private enterprise

noun

1. economic activity undertaken by private individuals or organizations under private ownership Compare public enterprise

2. another name for capitalism

private enterprise

1. Business carried on for profit and not owned by the government; also, the system that discourages public ownership of business; the same as free enterprise. (See private sector.)

Word History and Origins

Origin of private enterprise¹

First recorded in 1835–45

Example Sentences

During the 1990s, Bill and Hillary Clinton fervently mapped out paths for poor women that would ostensibly make private enterprise the central solution to poverty.

Read more on Salon

It was a "failure at all levels of government" that "private enterprise has simply been allowed to run roughshod" with contracts that simply benefited them, he added.

Read more on BBC

But they were always intended to sustain an unstable compromise between true popular sovereignty and the oligarchic forms of power created and demanded by an economy built on private enterprise.

Read more on Salon

Research has made clear that Latinos bear the brunt of underrepresentation across important societal institutions such as academia, private enterprise, philanthropy and news media.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

And perhaps also on how civilian society and private enterprise can play their parts.

Read more on BBC