market

plural markets

1. A gathering of people for the purchase and sale of merchandise, often periodic at a set time.

   There's a market every Thursday and Saturday in the town square.

   2 more examples

   The right to hold a weekly market was an invaluable privilege not given to all towns in the Middle Ages.

   The market is a process, actuated by the interplay of the actions of the various individuals cooperating under the division of labor.

   1949, Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action

   Synonyms: mart, fair

2. A relatively spacious outdoor or covered site where traders set up stalls, either temporarily or permanently or semi-permanently, and buyers browse the merchandise.

   This site on North Street used to be the market, until it was redeveloped.

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   ‘I understand that the district was considered a sort of sanctuary,’ the Chief was saying. ‘[…] They tell me there was a recognized swag market down here.’

   1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

   The San Juan market is Mexico City's most famous deli of exotic meats, where an adventurous shopper can hunt down hard-to-find critters such as ostrich, wild boar and crocodile. Only the city zoo offers greater species diversity.

   2013 July 26, Nick Miroff, “Mexico gets a taste for eating insects …”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 7, page 32

   Synonyms: marketplace, bazaar, arcade

3. Any physical store selling groceries, such as a grocery store or convenience store.

   Stop by the market on your way home and pick up some milk.

   1 more example

   Mixes [such as cake mixes, pancake mixes, or sauce mixes] are sometimes a reasonable alternative and sometimes not. […] Pancake mixes often offer no advantages at all. Nonetheless, there are times when you would be foolish not to use a mix. Perhaps a domestic emergency occurs. Perhaps cupcakes must be brought to school tomorrow morning, but when you stop at the market on your way home from work, you cannot remember whether you have baking powder, cream of tartar, baking soda, nutmeg, cake flour, chocolate, or vanilla on your shelf, or you want to go through the “five items or fewer” line. So you buy the mix. Only a glutton for punishment would do otherwise.

   1999, Cheryl Mendelson, Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, Scribner, →ISBN, pages 45-46

4. A group of potential or current customers for one's product.

   We believe that the market for the new widget will be the older homeowner.

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   Senior citizens are our core market at present, and we can't afford to alienate them as we explore other markets.

   There is a third thing to be considered: how a market can be created for produce, or how production can be limited to the capacities of the market.

   1848, John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John W[illiam] Parker, […], →OCLC

   Synonyms: sale

5. A geographical area or region where a certain commercial demand exists.

   Foreign markets were lost as our currency rose versus their valuta.

6. A formally organized, sometimes monopolistic, system of trading in specified goods or effects.

   The stock market ceased to be monopolized by the paper-shuffling national stock exchanges with the advent of Internet markets.

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   As they were approaching bankruptcy from being knocked out of the calculator market, they began development on the first commercially available microcomputer, the Altair.

   1980, InfoWorld, volume 2, number 20

   If the takeover is approved, Comcast would control 20 of the top 25 cable markets, […]. Antitrust officials will need to consider Comcast’s status as a monopsony (a buyer with disproportionate power), when it comes to negotiations with programmers, whose channels it pays to carry.

   2014 March 15, “Turn it off”, in The Economist, volume 410, number 8878, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2014

   Defending the deal, Trump said no US president had ever been as tough on Iran as him, and “there is nothing as smart as the market – and the market loves it”.

   2026 June 18, Andrew Roth, Patrick Wintour, “Trump signs Iran peace plan, claiming deal averts ‘worldwide depression’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

7. The sum total traded in a process of individuals trading for certain commodities.
8. The price for which a thing is sold in a market; hence, value or worth; market value.

   Q: What's the market on such a thing, nowadays? A: Oh, no less than forty, I should reckon.

   1 more example

   What is a man If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed?

   c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iv]

present singular third person markets · participle present marketing · participle past marketed · past marketed

1. transitiveTo make (products or services) available for sale and promote them.

   We plan to market an ecology model by next quarter.

2. transitiveTo promote for or as if for sale.

   However, the intention here is not to market any particular belief, but rather to catalyze people to think more about life after death and its meaning in the face of grief and loss.

   1994, Simcha Paull Raphael, Jewish Views of the Afterlife, page 364

3. transitiveTo sell.

   We marketed more this quarter already than all last year!

4. intransitiveTo deal in a market; to buy or sell; to make bargains for provisions or goods.
5. intransitiveTo shop in a market; to attend a market.

   We did a little shopping; but I cannot remember much of the town. It was Saturday night, and all Perth was marketing.

   1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 201

plural Markets

1. A surname.