Antitrust

How to spell antitrust

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce antitrust

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does antitrust mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to laws and policies that prevent monopolies and promote fair business competition.

Antitrust in a sentence

• The merger was blocked after regulators raised antitrust concerns.

• The company faced a lengthy antitrust investigation over its market dominance.

Where does antitrust come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word joins the Greek prefix anti-, meaning 'against' or 'opposed to', with the word 'trust'. 'Trust' itself comes from Old Norse traust, meaning 'confidence' or 'reliance', and for centuries it referred only to faith placed in a person. In the United States during the late 1800s, 'trust' took on a new commercial meaning: large business combinations, such as Standard Oil, were legally organised as trusts in which shareholders handed control to a board of trustees, allowing a handful of firms to dominate a whole industry. Laws written to break up these monopolies, beginning with the Sherman Act of 1890, were therefore called antitrust laws, literally aimed against the trusts. The single-word, unhyphenated spelling became the settled form in legal and business writing, which is the main thing to remember when the urge to insert a hyphen strikes.

How the word is built

• anti- (against)
• trust (a monopolistic combination of businesses)