entrepreneur
Pluralentrepreneurs
- 1A person who starts a business, and more generally someone who owns and manages a business while taking on its financial risks.
The entrepreneur poured her savings into a small software startup.
Successful entrepreneurs often fail several times before building a company that lasts.
Similarfounder, businessperson, businesswoman, businessman, industrialist
Note
The word came into English directly from French, where it meant "one who undertakes or manages," built on entreprendre, "to undertake." That idea of taking on a venture sits at the heart of the modern sense. Christian Wolmar's 2021 history of London's railway termini sets provincial entrepreneurs, eager to connect with the capital, against London capitalists. The two words are neighbors, not synonyms: one undertakes a business, the other holds capital.
- 2Someone who arranges and presents concerts, plays, or other entertainments, or who runs a theater or a similar venue.
The entrepreneur engaged a celebrated soprano for the entire opera season.
Rival entrepreneurs competed to bring the famous actress to their theaters.
Note
A word from the old world of playbills and opera seasons, now archaic. Here the venture being undertaken is a concert series, a play, or the running of a theater. Today the natural word is impresario, and using entrepreneur this way will sound deliberately period. It is the same idea of undertaking as the business sense, applied to the stage rather than the marketplace.
- 3A person who serves as an intermediary between others; a middleman or go-between.
The journalist became an unlikely entrepreneur, ferrying proposals between the union and the management.
Chicago, it was, by way of compensation, beginning to take on the cosmopolitan cast of culture that it has worn ever since, as entrepreneur between the Old World and the New.
1938, Federal Writers' Project, “Market Place for Words”Similarintermediary, go-between, middleman, mediator, broker
Note
A rare and often figurative use, in which what is undertaken is passage between two sides. The usual construction is entrepreneur between one party and another. It can describe a place as easily as a person: the Federal Writers' Project in 1938 cast Chicago as "entrepreneur between the Old World and the New." In everyday prose, middleman or go-between will be clearer.
Less common meaning
- 4A person who manages the career of an artist or performer, acting as their agent.
Her entrepreneur arranged a tour of the provincial theaters and took a share of every fee.
The violinist quarreled with his entrepreneur over the terms of the American engagements.
Note
Obsolete now, and easy to blur with the impresario meaning. The impresario runs the show, while this figure looks after one artist's career and dealings. Modern English says agent or manager, and a reader meeting entrepreneur in this role should take it as a historical usage, not a current option.
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Origin
English borrowed this from French entrepreneur ("one who undertakes or manages"), which came from Middle French, formed from entreprendre ("to undertake") plus the suffix -eur.