oligarch

plural oligarchs

1. A member of an oligarchy; someone who is part of a small group that runs a country.

   In thus ruling the issue out of court, Lenin implied that there was no problem about the relationship between a class and a party, or a party and its leaders, and that government by a handful of oligarchs can properly be called government by the class they claim to represent […]

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 504

2. A very wealthy business owner who wields political power.

   Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchs and their supporters were surfeiting on the surplus.

   1908 February 19, Jack London, chapter 17, in The Iron Heel, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, page 251

   5 more examples

   Economic disaster loomed, as the rotting remains of the Soviet economy were exposed to free-market reforms, which brought inflation and the sale of state-owned assets at low prices to a new class of ultra-rich businessmen called "oligarchs," who made America's robber barons of the late nineteenth century look like Puritan preachers.

   2005, Bill Clinton, My Life, volume II, New York: Vintage Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 49

   But then, this is Ukraine. Since the country won its independence in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Parliament has become dominated by the oligarchs - enormously wealthy industrial managers who have interests in steel, iron, coal, the media and soccer clubs.

   2005 December 23, Judy Dempsey, “Ukraine's dance of the oligarchs”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 09 Mar 2022

   Ukraine's oligarchs emerged in parallel to Russia's, who have been more closely studied, and they were quite similar.

   2006, Anders Åslund, Michael McFaul, Revolution in Orange, →ISBN, page 10

   The astronomical sales of the tome have proven once and for all that for teen girls and young women in Russia, the allure of marrying an oligarch is many times more powerful than acquiring fame or intellectual status.

   2010, Max Lenderman, Brand New World: How Paupers, Pirates, and Oligarchs are Reshaping Business, Collins, →ISBN, page 19

   Borisovich said he also wanted to highlight how a group of “enablers”, such as lawyers, accountants, and bankers, were helping oligarchs launder their “ill-gotten gains” by investing the cash in prime London mansions.

   2016 February 4, “Mega-rich homes tour puts spotlight on London's oligarchs”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 07 Mar 2022, retrieved 08 Mar 2022

   Synonyms: plutocrat, tycoonocrat

3. cosmogonyA protoplanet formed during oligarchic accretion.

   In the inner Solar System, only the asteroid Ceres was able to grow fast enough to become a dwarf planet, but in the outer Solar System huge numbers of icy bodies formed, ranging from pebbles to the oligarchs now recognized as dwarf planets.

   2016, Michael A. Seeds, Dana Backman, Foundations of Astronomy, Enhanced