Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Duopoly
/djuːˈɒpəli/noun
A market supplied by exactly two sellers.
The Greek roots
δύο
dúo
two
πωλεῖν
pōleîn
to sell
Literally: “two-selling”
The story of the word
The pattern word is monopoly, μονοπώλιον, which Aristotle already uses when he tells how Thales cornered every olive press in Miletus and proved a philosopher could get rich if he cared to. Duopoly copies that shape and swaps in a two. The front half is ambiguous: Latin duo and Greek δύο are the same ancestral word in two mouths, so only the selling half is certainly Greek.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → modern economic coinage → English
Same family
monopolyoligopolymonopsony
In a sentence
Two carriers control ninety percent of the route, and the fares behave exactly as duopoly theory predicts.
Regulators blocked the merger to avoid turning a crowded market into a duopoly.