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:
“Many organizations are slowing hiring while they wait to see how AI agents will actually perform,” said Robb Reck, chief information, trust and security officer at Pax8, a small-business cloud-computing marketplace.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
Co-sponsored by a mix of Republicans and Democrats, the bill could help preserve the conference-based rights marketplace on which ESPN’s college-sports business depends.
From Salon ● Sep. 15, 2026
“You can generate more volume and more applications by utilizing AI, but volume in the marketplace is not necessarily what gets you hired,” Link, SHRM’s chief human-resources officer, told MarketWatch.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 11, 2026
Her plans for the future include getting a PhD in horticulture and developing a marketplace experience in which shoppers learn about flower preservation, as well as the origins and cultural significance of her beloved blooms.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026
As we walked, we were joined by more rats; at that time of day they converged on the marketplace from all directions.
From "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien
The MPs also suggested that online marketplaces be held accountable for unsafe products such as the modification kits that are sold on their platforms.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
One of his early successes at Thrive came in 2012 when Kushner launched a health insurer called Oscar that sold coverage directly to individuals in the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2026
"In the marketplaces you basically only find pangolin scales, not the whole animals, which makes it hard to know which species are being hunted and where they are coming from," says Feijó.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 26, 2026
By unloading volumes like “Home Long-Term Oxygen Treatment in Italy” and “Marriage Litigation in Medieval England” on third-party marketplaces, he has roughly doubled his revenue from this point in 2025.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 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.
