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:
What the API’s buyers get is the advantage of accessing those posts instantaneously, rather than waiting for them to percolate into the marketplace.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
The goal here would be to strengthen the yen by selling offshore holdings and to potentially bring a big buyer of Japanese government debt to the marketplace.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 23, 2026
“Although to be fair, we don’t really participate in the lowest end of the marketplace where maybe those things are being experienced in the economy,” he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
As a comparison, eBay's marketplace business sellers typically pay between 6.9p and 14.9p depending on the category.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
She was always dreaming of something else—the shape of the clouds or the color of the sari she had seen in the marketplace or, most often, the husband she would have one day.
From "Homeless Bird" by Gloria Whelan
But it has also frustrated hundreds of Russian sellers who depend on online marketplaces for their livelihoods, making the war feel closer to home after almost four and a half years.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
That is the steepest single-year decline since the marketplaces opened in 2014.
From Salon ● Jul. 19, 2026
The states’ lawsuit offers coherent concerns about the deal’s impact on the film and cable TV marketplaces, but it doesn’t look like a slam dunk, according to antitrust experts.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
Potentially dangerous baby products - including self-feeding devices, pillows and sleeping bags - are still being sold on online marketplaces in the UK, according to Which?.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 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
Definitions 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.
