Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A public gathering held for buying and selling goods or services.
  • noun An open space or a building where goods or services are offered for sale by multiple sellers.
  • noun A store or shop that sells agricultural produce.
  • noun A system of exchange in which prices are determined by the interaction of multiple, competing buyers and sellers.
  • noun A similar system in which information or ideas are evaluated by multiple competing interests.
  • noun The buyers and sellers for a particular good or service or within a particular region.
  • noun The business transacted between such sellers and buyers.
  • noun The price of a particular good or service as determined by supply and demand.
  • noun The demand for a particular commodity.
  • noun A standing commitment to buy and sell a given security at stated prices.
  • noun A subdivision of a population considered as consumers.
  • noun The market price.
  • intransitive verb To offer for sale.
  • intransitive verb To try to make (a product or service) appealing to particular groups of consumers; promote by marketing.
  • intransitive verb To deal in a market; engage in buying or selling.
  • intransitive verb To buy household supplies.
  • idiom (in the market) Interested in buying.
  • idiom (on the market) Available for buying.
  • idiom (on the market) Up for sale.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun On the stock-exchange, one of the classes into which the business of the exchange is divided; a group of jobbers engaged in a particular kind of business.
  • noun An occasion on which goods are publicly exposed for sale and buyers assemble to purchase; the meeting together of people for selling and buying at private sale, as distinguished from an auction, where the sale is public.
  • noun A public place or building where goods are exposed for sale; a market-place or market-house.
  • noun The assemblage of people in a market: as, there was a large market to-day.
  • noun A place of purchase and sale in general; a city, country, region, or locality where anything is or may be bought or sold: as, the home or foreign market (the country in which goods are produced, or that to which they are transported or from which they are brought); the American or British market; the London market.
  • noun Traffic; trade; purchase or sale, or rate of purchase and sale; demand; hence, price; cost; worth; valuation: as, to make market; a ready market; a dull market; the market is low; there is no market for such goods.
  • noun In English law: The franchise or liberty granted to or enjoyed by a municipality or other body to establish a place, usually in an open space, for the meeting of people to buy and sell under prescribed conditions.
  • noun The assemblage of buyers and sellers on the day and within the hours appointed.
  • To deal in a market; buy or sell; make bargains for provisions or goods.
  • To carry to or sell in a market; make market or sale for; vend; sell: as, to market meat or vegetables; to market a crop.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A meeting together of people, at a stated time and place, for the purpose of buying and selling (as cattle, provisions, wares, etc.) by private purchase and sale, and not by auction.
  • noun A public place (as an open space in a town) or a large building, where a market is held; a market place or market house; esp., a place where provisions are sold.
  • noun An opportunity for selling or buying anything; demand, as shown by price offered or obtainable
  • noun Exchange, or purchase and sale; traffic
  • noun The price for which a thing is sold in a market; market price. Hence: Value; worth.
  • noun (Eng. Law) The privelege granted to a town of having a public market.
  • noun A specified group of potential buyers, or a region in which goods may be sold; a town, region, or country, where the demand exists.
  • noun [Obs.] a swaggering bully; a noisy braggart.
  • noun [Eng.] a bell rung to give notice that buying and selling in a market may begin.
  • noun a cross set up where a market is held.
  • noun a garden in which vegetables are raised for market.
  • noun the raising of vegetables for market.
  • noun an open square or place in a town where markets or public sales are held.
  • noun a town that has the privilege of a stated public market.
  • intransitive verb To deal in a market; to buy or sell; to make bargains for provisions or goods.
  • transitive verb To expose for sale in a market; to traffic in; to sell in a market, and in an extended sense, to sell in any manner.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun City square or other fairly spacious site where traders set up stalls and buyers browse the merchandise.
  • noun An organised, often periodic, trading event at such site

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old North French, from Vulgar Latin *marcātus, from Latin mercātus, from past participle of mercārī, to buy, from merx, merc-, merchandise.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Recorded since circa 1154, "a meeting at a fixed time for buying and selling livestock and provisions". From Old Northern French markiet (Old French marchié, modern marché), from Latin mercātus ("trade, market"), from mercor ("I trade, deal in, buy"), itself derived from merx ("wares, merchandise"), from the Italic root *merk-, possibly stemming from Etruscan, referring to various aspects of economics.

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Examples

Comments

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  • MARkeT

    May 5, 2008

  • The firm's salaries are market

    —in text I'm editing. This shows that the writer has treated 'market' as an adjective, since the bare noun is not possible in that position. Presumably influenced by both the noun-noun expression 'market salary' and adjectives such as 'market-driven', 'market-competitive', etc. But these compounds are the only ghits I see for "salaries are market", so I'm going to treat it as a nonce-formation and edit it out.

    March 3, 2009

  • I've seen this usage before in business documents. It's a head-up-arse way of saying typical. Almost all salaries are "market", since they're driven by the labour market.

    March 4, 2009