Other forms: franchises, franchised, franchising
A franchise is the right to run your own shop under somebody else's name — their sign, their menu, their rules, and your money and your staff. Most of the burger and coffee chains on your high street are franchises, each branch owned by a different person.
The word has spread a long way. In film and games a franchise is a whole family of works built on one story world: the sequels, the spin-offs, the toys. In American sport a franchise is a club's place in the league, and the player the club is built around. And in politics the franchise is the right to vote — extending the franchise to women took a century of argument. You buy a franchise, you hold one, and a company franchises its name out to the people who run its shops.
1nounfranchiseThe right to sell a company's goods or services under its name, and the business run that way.~23%
“She bought a coffee franchise on the high street.”
synonyms: licence
2nounmediaA family of films, games or books built on one story world.~66%
“The franchise now runs to nine films and a theme park ride.”
3verbtradeTo sell somebody the right to trade under your name.~7%
“The chain franchises its restaurants across Europe.”
4nounsuffrageThe right to vote in public elections.~4%
“Women in Britain won the franchise in stages.”
synonyms: suffrage, the vote
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 173 sentences found in the wild and placed 167 of them on a sense (6 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
FRANCH-ise → FRENCH fries
The same red sign hangs over the same shop in forty towns. Behind every counter the same basket of French fries goes down into the same hot oil, and the man who owns this one had to buy the right to hang that sign.
hooks ontofrench
It began as freedom. Old French franchise meant exactly that, built on franc, free — the same franc that gives English frank. A franchise was a liberty somebody granted you: the right to hold a market, the right to vote. The burger shop keeps the shape of it exactly — a freedom to trade under a name, handed to you by the person who owns the name.
Old French
franchise — freedom
Middle English
franchise
English, today
franchise
Built from
From Middle English franchise, fraunchise, from Old French franchise (“freedom”), a derivative of franc (“free”). More at frank.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA