A.Word.A.Day --duopsony

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Jan 9, 2012

This week's theme
Words coined using combining forms

This week's words
duopsony
hypochondriac
dysthymia
autologous
gerontology

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Poets, novelists, essayists, and anyone who writes uses the same currency: words. That's all they need to say to say all there is to say. The trick is to choose the right denomination and arrange them in the right way. There are times when nothing quite fits, and then you can invent your own. You have the building blocks. This week we'll feature five words made by using combining forms.

What are combining forms? You can think of them as Lego (from Danish, leg: play + godt: well) bricks of language. As the term indicates, a combining form is a linguistic atom that occurs only in combination with some other form which could be a word, another combining form, or an affix (unlike a combining form, an affix can't attach to another affix).

duopsony

PRONUNCIATION:

(doo-OP-suh-nee, dyoo-)

MEANING:

noun: A market condition in which there are only two buyers, thus exerting great influence on price.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek duo- (two) + -opsony, from opsonia (purchase).

NOTES:

Here's a little chart that explains it all:

monopoly:	one seller, many buyers
duopoly:	two sellers, many buyers
oligopoly:	a few sellers, many buyers

monopsony:	one buyer, many sellers
duopsony:	two buyers, many sellers
oligopsony:	a few buyers, many sellers

USAGE:

"The BBC-ITV duopsony was gone for good, and the competition between the TV companies as purchasers of the rights intensified."
Stephen Dobson and John Goddard; The Economics of Football; Cambridge University Press; 2011.

See more usage examples of duopsony in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility. -James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)

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