Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

conglomerate

UK/kənˈɡlɒm.(ə.)ɹɪt/US/kənˈɡlɑ.mɚ.ət/
nounC2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,253 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: conglomerates

A conglomerate is a large company made of many different businesses. A media conglomerate, break up the conglomerate, an industrial conglomerate.

The argument for one is that unrelated businesses steady each other, and the argument against is that investors can diversify for themselves and do not need a company to do it. In geology, conglomerate is rock made of pebbles cemented together.

Definitions of conglomerate

  1. 1nounconglomerateA large company made of many different businesses.C2

    “The huge conglomerate owns hotels, a bank, a shipping line and several newspapers.”

conglomerate is a company.

Remember it

The Latin behind it is a ball of thread wound from many separate strands. A conglomerate is many businesses wound into one company.

hooks ontoball

Where it comes from

Latin conglomeratus means rolled together — con plus glomus, a ball of thread.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ḱóm — beside, by, near, with

  2. Latin

    conglomerātus

  3. English, today

    conglomerate

Built from

  • conglomerō · Latin — to pile into a heap, to roll together
  • glomerō · Latin — to pile into a heap, to make into a ball, glomerate
  • glomus · Latin — ball of thread; ball-shaped mass

First attested in the second part of the 16th century; from Latin conglomerātus, perfect passive participle of conglomerō (“to pile into a heap, to roll together”) (see -ate), from con- (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ḱóm (“beside, by, near, with”)) + glomerāre (from glomerō (“to pile into a heap, to make into a ball, glomerate”), from glomus (“ball of thread; ball-shaped mass”), from Proto-Indo-European gel- (“to form into a ball; ball”)).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

conglomerate in the wild

  • The popularity of conglomerates has varied over time and across regions.

    Conglomerate (company)

  • In contrast, conglomerates have remained prevalent in Asia, especially in China, India, Japan, and South Korea.

    Conglomerate (company)

  • Hyundai Group is a South Korean conglomerate founded by Chung Ju-yung.

    Hyundai Group

  • Equivalents to the zaibatsu can still be found in other countries, such as the chaebol conglomerates of South Korea.

    Zaibatsu

  • The larger fragments within conglomerate are called clasts, while the finer sediment surrounding the clasts is called the matrix.

    Conglomerate (geology)

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.