ownership

UK/ˈəʊnəʃɪp/US/ˈoʊnɚʃɪp/

nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,548 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: ownerships

Ownership is the fact of having something as your own. Home ownership, transfer of ownership, take ownership of it.

In management, taking ownership of a problem means accepting responsibility for it, which is a metaphor that has almost swallowed the plain sense in office speech. Legal ownership and beneficial ownership can sit with different people, which is how money is hidden.

Definitions of ownership

1nounownershipThe fact of having something as your own.B2
“You will need proof of ownership before you can sell the car.”

ownership is a state.

Where it comes from

Middle English
ouner
English
owner
English, today
ownership

From owner + -ship. owner comes from Middle English ouner. Middle English ouner, from Old English āgnere. by surface analysis, own + -er, though etymologically own is a back-formation from owner.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

ownership in the wild

Property law is the area of law that governs legal rights, including ownership and tenure, in property.
Property law
Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee.
Socialism
In parallel, many former socialist politicians and political parties embraced "Third Way" politics, remaining committed to equality and welfare while abandoning public ownership and class-based politics.
Socialism
The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex: one can gain, transfer, and lose ownership of property in a number of ways.
Ownership
A share (sometimes referred to as stock or equity) is a unit of equity ownership in the capital stock of a corporation.
Share (finance)

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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.

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