Oligopoly

//ɒlɪˈɡɒpəli// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An economic condition in which a small number of sellers exert control over the market of a commodity. countable, uncountable

    "Because of the ease of collusion, particularly price fixing, duopolies and oligopolies easily produce outcomes as bad for the general public as outright monopolies."

  2. 2
    (economics) a market in which control over the supply of a commodity is in the hands of a small number of producers and each one can influence prices and affect competitors wordnet

Example

More examples

"An oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly."

Etymology

PIE word *h₃ligos From oligo- (prefix meaning ‘few; several’) + -poly (suffix meaning ‘pertaining to the number of sellers in a market’), by analogy with monopoly.

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