# privatization

Pronunciation: US say "pry-vuh-ty-ZAY-shuhn" /ˌpɹaɪvətaɪˈzeɪʃən/; UK say "pry-vi-ty-ZAY-shuhn" /ˌpɹaɪvɪtaɪˈzeɪʃ(ə)n/

## Noun

1. The transfer of a company or organization from government ownership and control into private hands.
   - Simple: The selling of a government-owned company or service to private owners.
   - _The privatization of state-owned airlines was a defining economic policy of the 1980s._
   - _Critics argued that privatization had transferred public wealth into private hands too cheaply._

## Noun

2. The act of treating a thought or idea as private in scope, a matter for individuals rather than a shared or public concern. *(rare)*
   - Simple: Treating a thought or idea as a private matter for each person, not a matter for everyone.
   - _The privatization of grief can leave a person isolated, processing loss entirely alone._
   - _Activists pushed back against the privatization of domestic life, arguing that how a household treats its members is a public concern._

## Origin

This is a calque (loan-translation) of German Privatisierung, using the English ending -ation, from Latin prīvātus ("apart from the state; private"), linked to post-First World War German economic ideas. It was popularized by Sidney Merlin in 1943, who knew of the already-attested term reprivatization.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/privatization (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).