marketplace

• market place, (archaic) market-place

market +‎ place

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marketplace (plural marketplaces)

1. An open area in a town housing a public market.
2. The space, actual or metaphorical, in which a market operates.

   Some high-street retailers were slow to enter the new digital marketplace of the Internet.

3. (by extension) The world of commerce and trade.
   • 2021, Judith Rainhorn, The Colour of Controversy..., p. 10:

     Endorsing the liberal anti-interventionist credo that the marketplace should act as the "site of verification," the advocates of white lead opposed government intervention for the sake of open economic competition, which they claimed revealed its true value and thus should be the sole determinant: "When the railways were built, the stage coaches disppeared; they died a timely death. If zinc white is truly superior to white lead, it will kill us in the marketplace, but the government should not intervene." These were the words of Expert-Bezançon, in his February 1903 deposition to the parliamentary committee examining the bill for banning lead-based pigments in paint.

4. (figurative) A place or sphere for the exchange of anything, such as ideas or fashions.

   marketplace of ideas

   • 2000, Jason A. Frank, John Tambornino, Vocations of Political Theory, page 239:

     While political theory frequently appears condemned to nostalgic reflection, cultural studies often dulls its critical edge in the never-ending stampede to document the newest styles and counterstyles of the cultural marketplace.

   • 2007, Al Gore, The Assault on Reason, New York: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 268:

     So I have seen this controversy from both sides, and I truly believe that the most important factor is the preservation of the Internet's potential for becoming the new neutral marketplace of ideas that is so needed for the revitalization of American democracy.

• market square