oligopoly
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of oligopoly
First recorded in 1890–95; oligo- + (mono)poly
Explanation
In an oligopoly, a few powerful merchants or companies control the entire market. If you and three friends buy up all the toilet paper factories in the world, you will have a toilet paper oligopoly. Oligopoly comes from the ancient Greek oligo-, for "few," and pole, for "merchant," but the term wasn't invented until the late 19th century. In an economic oligopoly, only a few producers control the supply of something (like steel, cars, or clown suits), and each one has a lot of influence over prices. Oligopoly might remind you of monopoly, which is when a single producer controls the whole market.
Vocabulary lists containing oligopoly
Economics
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Microeconomics
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Chapter 6, Sections 1–4
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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.
Hard drives capture about 80% of cloud storage, and are made by a disciplined oligopoly.
From Barron's ● May 1, 2026
"The problem with this industry is that the supply chain is an oligopoly and sometimes even a duopoly."
From BBC ● Feb. 3, 2026
Instead, we have an oligopoly of dominant banks that issue them: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, American Express, Citigroup and Capital One, which together account for about 70% of all transactions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 26, 2026
We are leaving fragmented competition for the era of oligopoly.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 10, 2025
OTTAWA—The Bank of Canada’s No. 2 official endorsed a competition shakeup in the highly concentrated financial-services industry, saying the country’s banking sector is an oligopoly and changes could help lift Canada’s prolonged productivity slump.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2025
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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.
