Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Cartel
/kɑːrˈtɛl/noun
An agreement among rivals to fix prices or divide a market, and the group that makes it.
The Greek roots
χάρτης
khártēs
sheet of papyrus
Literally: “little paper”
Follow a root:χάρτης7 words
The story of the word
The first cartels were pieces of paper. Italian cartello was a placard, then a written challenge to a duel, then a written pact between warring states about exchanging prisoners; only in Bismarck's Germany did Kartell settle onto industrial price-fixing, and English took that sense around 1900. Khártēs, the papyrus sheet underneath it all, also gave card, chart, charter and cartoon, and Greek may itself have borrowed the word from Egyptian.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Italian → French → English
- First recorded
- 1550s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
chartchartercardcartooncartography
In a sentence
Regulators broke up the shipping cartel after finding rate sheets circulated by email.