Cartel

How to spell cartel

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cartel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cartel mean?

1. nounA group of independent producers or suppliers who join together to control prices and limit competition.

Cartel in a sentence

• The oil cartel agreed to cut production to push prices higher.

• Regulators broke up the cartel after proving the firms had fixed their bids.

Where does cartel come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word travelled into English through French cartel, which itself came from the Italian cartello, the diminutive of carta meaning 'paper' or 'card'. The Italian carta descended from the Latin charta, a 'sheet of papyrus' or 'paper', which in turn came from the Greek khartes, a 'leaf of papyrus'. A cartello originally meant a little written notice, a placard, or a formal written challenge to a duel, and from there it broadened in the 1500s and 1600s to mean a written agreement between warring states, especially one for exchanging prisoners. By the late 1800s the German Kartell helped fix the modern commercial sense, an alliance of separate firms that agree to fix prices or limit competition, and English settled on the single-l spelling 'cartel'. The same charta root still sits inside everyday words such as 'chart', 'card', and 'charter', which is a handy reminder that cartel is built on the idea of something written down on paper.

How the word is built

• cart- (from Italian carta: paper, card)
• -el (diminutive)