noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The study of resource allocation, distribution and consumption; of capital and investment; and of management of the factors of production. uncountable

   "Mary studied economics for five years before going into banking."

2. 2
   the branch of social science that deals with the production and distribution and consumption of goods and services and their management wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

dismal scienceclassical economicsdismal sciencedynamic economicseconeconometrics

Example

More examples

"While employed at the bank, he taught economics at college."

Etymology

From econom(y) + -ics, from Latin oeconomia, from Ancient Greek οἰκονομία (oikonomía, “the management of a household”).

Related phrases

Buddhist economicsapplied economicsbehavioral economicsbusiness economicscounter-economicsdemand-side economicsfinancial economicshome economicsmathematical economicsnormative economicsparticipatory economicspositive economics

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.