Other forms: subsidies
A subsidy is government money paid to keep a price low or an industry alive. Farm subsidies, a fuel subsidy, cut the subsidies.
The point is to make something cheaper than the market would: subsidised housing, subsidised transport, a subsidised meal. Subsidies are politically hard to remove because the people who lose them notice immediately and the people who pay do not. Note subsidise, the verb, and cross-subsidy, where profits from one part of a business pay for another. The plural is subsidies.
1nounsubsidyGovernment money paid to keep a price low or an industry alive.
“The subsidy was cut and the route closed within a year.”
subsidy is a financial support.
Latin subsidium meant reserve troops held in support — sub-, under, plus sedere, to sit. It came into English as a tax granted to a monarch, and only in the modern era reversed direction to mean money flowing the other way.
Latin
subsidium
Old French
subside
Anglo-Norman
subsidee
Middle English
subsidy
English, today
subsidy
From Middle English subsidy, subsidie, from Anglo-Norman subsidee, subsidie, from Old French subside, from Latin subsidium, from subsido from sub- + sīdō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA