Word Finder - monopoly

definition

A situation, by legal privilege or other agreement, in which solely one party (company, cartel etc.) exclusively provides a particular product or service, dominating that market and generally exerting powerful control over it.

definition

An exclusive control over the trade or production of a commodity or service through exclusive possession.

example

A land monopoly renders its holder(s) nearly almighty in an agricultural society.

definition

The privilege granting the exclusive right to exert such control.

example

Granting monopolies in concession constitutes a market-conform alternative to taxation for the state, while the crown sometimes bestowed a monopoly as an outrageous gift.

definition

(metonymy) The market thus controlled.

definition

(metonymy) The holder (person, company or other) of such market domination in one of the above manners.

synonyms

• monopolist

The state tobacco monopoly was abolished in 1817.

Venice lost her monopoly of oriental traffic.

No one has the monopoly on truth.

In the personal computer market, Microsoft holds a monopoly.

The cell phone company began to have a monopoly in the rural area because it was the only carrier with good reception.

The desire to obtain the monopoly of the spice trade has been a potent force in the fashioning of Asiatic history.

There was little interest in another round of Monopoly.

Cloves, however, form its chief product, though the trade in them is less important than formerly, when the Dutch prohibited the rearing of the clove-tree in all the other islands subject to their rule, in order to secure the monopoly to Amboyna.

But the English were simple traders or explorers; far more formidable were the Dutch, who came to the East partly to avenge the injuries inflicted on their country by the Spaniards, partly to break the commercial monopoly of the peninsular states.

The caravan trade was created by the Ghadamsi merchants who, aided by their superior intelligence, capacity and honesty, long enjoyed a monopoly.

The class of traders who made a living by disreputable means and attempted to keep a monopoly of the island on which they settled, became notorious under the name of " beachcombers," and for each of the many dark chapters in Polynesian history there must have been many more unwritten.

It did little to colonize New France, and in 1660, after more than thirty years of its monopoly, there were not more than 2000 French in the whole country.

Henceforth in name, if not in fact, monopoly is ended in Canada.

Though opposed to a monopoly of political power in the South by the great slaveholders, he deprecated anti-slavery agitation (even favouring denial of the right of petition on that subject) as threatening abolition or the dissolution of the Union, and went with his sectional leaders so far as to demand freedom of choice for the Territories, and protection for slavery where it existed - this even so late as 1860.

Under Justinian a monopoly of the trade and manufacture was reserved to the emperor, and looms, worked by women, were set up within the imperial palace at Constantinople.

The position of the archipelago, at the " cross-roads " of the North Pacific, has made it commercially important since the days of the whale fishery, and it has a practical monopoly of coaling, watering and victualling.

Fearless and patient navigators, they ventured into regions where no one else dared to go, and, always with an eye to their monopoly, they carefully guarded the secrets of their trade routes and discoveries, and their knowledge of winds and currents.

In 1780 all the Europeans in Laraish were expelled by Mohammed XVI., although in 1786 the monopoly of its trade had been granted to Holland, even its export of wheat.

Indeed, this and the kindred linoleum business (also due to Nairn, who in 1877 built the first linoleum factory in Scotland) were for many years the monopoly of Kirkcaldy.

Tzibos took advantage of the extreme poverty of the Lazi to create a Roman monopoly by which he became a middleman for all the trade both export and import.

Having failed to prevent the commercial treaties, Count Kanitz introduced a motion that the state should have a monopoly of all imported corn, and that the price at which it was to be sold should be fixed by law.

He created for himself a monopoly in the chief products of the country, to the furtber impoverishment of the people, and set up and kept going for years factories which never paid.

In January 1661 a land commission was appointed to investigate the financial and economical conditions of the kingdoms; the fiefs were transformed into counties; the nobles were deprived of their immunity from taxation; and in July 1662 the Norwegian towns received special privileges, including the monopoly of the lucrative timber trade.

When it is remembered that the ideal of both the authorities and the people is the ultimate monopoly of the home market by Hungarian industry and trade, and the strengthening of the Magyar influence by centralization, it is easy to understand the progress of Budapest.

Admission to the higher magistracies carried with it admission to the senate, and by the close of the struggle (about 300 B.C.) the political privilege of the two orders was equalized, with the exception of certain disabilities which, originally devised to break the political monopoly of the order, continued to be attached to the patricians after the victory of the plebs.

The principle of government monopoly in trade being thus established, President Kruger now turned his attention to the further securing of Boer political monopoly.

The process of liming, which originated at the time when the Dutch held a monopoly of the trade, was with the view of preventing the germination of the seeds, which were formerly immersed for three months in milk of lime for this purpose, and a preference is still manifested in some countries for nutmegs so prepared.

Originally AT&T was the sole monopoly on telephone company (telco) phone services in the U.S., or a lack of them according to the testimony of many customers.

The government policy would, they alleged, create an absolute and objectionable monopoly.

The cultivation was formerly a monopoly of the Spanish crown, but from 1817 payment of a tax, usually heavy, has been the only restriction.

Paper is a monopoly in Greece, and Grecian cigarette manufacturers, to escape the monopoly, have transferred their business to Egypt, where they make cigarettes from Grecian tobaccos by the aid of Greek workmen.

Tobacco cultivation is a government monopoly, and in 1905 the crop amounted to about 106,572,000 ib, yielding a profit to the government of some £3,500,000.

Their highly favoured position in England, contrasting markedly with their refusal of trade facilities to the English in some of the Baltic towns and their evident policy of monopoly in the Baltic trade, incensed the English mercantile classes, and doubtless influenced the increases in customs-duties which were regarded by the Germans as contrary to their treaty rights.

He conceived it as " a religious monopoly " to which " the nation at large contributes," while " Presbyterians alone receive," and which placed him in " a relation to the state " so " seriously objectionable " as to be " impossible to hold."5 The invidious distinction it drew between Presbyterians on the one hand, and Catholics, Friends, freethinking Christians, unbelievers and Jews on the other, who were compelled to support a ministry they " conscientiously disapproved," offended his always delicate conscience; while possibly the intellectual and ecclesiastical atmosphere of the city proved uncongenial to his liberal magnanimity.

Their asceticism degenerated into legalism, their claim to a monopoly of pure Christianity made them arrogant.

The port has a practical monopoly of the passenger traffic between the Cape and England.

This monopoly had been abolished in 1787, and the trade had been declared free to all Danish subjects, but practically the old arrangement was continued under disguised forms. Jon Sigurbsson began a hard struggle against the Danish government to obtain a reform.

To the south, the English, French and Dutch, though often in rivalry with one another, combined to break in on the monopoly of the Spaniards.

As regards Spanish America, England was content to profit by theAsiento treaty, which gave her the monopoly of slavehunting for the Spanish colonies and an opening for contraband trade.

In 1804 free banking was restricted to such an extent as to give practically a monopoly of the business to associations receiving special charters, and as these charters were generally awarded as favours to politicians the system was a formidable agency of corruption.

The merchants of Amsterdam and Hoorn soon formed themselves into the New Netherland Company, and on the 11th of October 1614 received from the States-General a three years' monopoly of the Dutch fur trade in New Netherland, i.e.

On the expiration of the charter of the New Netherland Company (1618) the StatesGeneral refused to grant a renewal, and only private ventures were authorized until 1621, when the West India Company was chartered for a term of twenty-four years; to this company was given a monopoly of Dutch trade with the whole American coast from Newfoundland to the Straits of Magellan.

William Kieft was appointed director-general late in 1637, and in 1638 the Company abandoned its monopoly of trade in New Netherland and gave notice that all inhabitants of the United Provinces, and of friendly countries, might trade there subject to an import duty of io %, an export duty of 15%, and to the requirement that the goods should be carried in the Company's ships.

These boards were now given the monopoly of the right to import certain wares (sometimes private buyers were allowed to purchase, but only on condition of selling the goods imported to the board); they were also entrusted with the reception of the instalments of raw materials already mentioned as released from bond in Germany.

At first this organization acted as agent of the newlyestablished approvisionment departments; it was only later that it received the monopoly of the right to import certain articles, the Government at the same time placing at its disposal certain wares with which to pay for them.

Her dress was of Spitalfields silk; her veil of Honiton lace; her ribbons came from Coventry; even her gloves had been made in London of English kid - a novel thing in days when the French had a monopoly in the finer kinds of gloves.

Railway communications are practically monopolized by the South Eastern & Chatham Company, a monopoly which has not infrequently been the cause of complaint on the part of farmers, traders and others.

By 1755 the obstacle to westward expansion had been thus reduced by half; outposts of the English colonists had penetrated the Allegheny and Cumberland plateaus, threatening French monopoly in the transmontane region, and a conflict became inevitable.

In the second half of the 17th century the monopoly system and the employment of slaves and forced labour gave rise to many abuses, and there was a rapid decline in the revenue from sugar, coffee and opium, while the competition of the British East India Company, which now exported spices, indigo, &c. from India to Europe, was severely felt.

Daendels, however, maintained the existing restrictions upon trade and even made rice a state monopoly.