antitrust

IPA/ˌæntiˈtrʌst/
KK[ˌæntaɪtrˈʌst]IPA/ˌæntiˈtrʌst/

antitrust — adjective

  • antitrustpositive
  • more antitrustcomparative
  • most antitrustsuperlative

1. relating to laws and government actions that prevent large businesses from unfai

1.adjectiveB2
Definition

relating to laws and government actions that prevent large businesses from unfairly taking over a market, secretly agreeing on prices, or blocking other companies from competing fairly.

Example

The antitrust investigation into the three tech companies lasted nearly two years.

Ada's law firm specializes in antitrust cases against large pharmaceutical corporations.

attributive noun: antitrust cases

Common collocations
  • antitrust law
  • antitrust investigation
  • antitrust case
  • antitrust enforcement
  • antitrust policy
  • antitrust legislation
  • antitrust action
  • antitrust lawsuit
  • antitrust ruling
  • antitrust violation
  • antitrust regulator
  • antitrust authority
Synonyms
  • anti-monopoly

    Narrower in scope — focuses specifically on single-supplier dominance rather than other unfair practices like price-fixing.

  • pro-competitive

    Describes the intended outcome (promoting competition) rather than the legal framework itself.

  • competition

    Used in compounds like 'competition law'; more common in UK and EU legal contexts than US.

Antonyms
  • anti-competitive

    Describes the behaviour that antitrust laws are meant to prevent, not the laws themselves.

Grammar Patterns

antitrust + noun

Usage Note

Frequently used as an attributive adjective before nouns such as 'law', 'case', 'investigation', and 'policy'. Cannot be used predicatively with a complement (*The law is antitrust).

Common Mistakes

The company was found guilty of antitrust.
The company was found guilty of antitrust violations.
'antitrust' is an adjective; it needs a noun like 'violations' or 'practices' to complete the meaning.
The government took antitrust against the merger.
The government took antitrust action against the merger.
'antitrust' is not a noun; use 'antitrust action' or 'antitrust measures'.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

While 'antitrust' (as an adjective) and 'competition' (in phrases like 'competition law' or 'competition policy') are often used to describe the same set of regulations, their emphases differ. 'Antitrust' comes from US law targeting 'trusts' — large business combinations that dominated 19th-century industries — and carries a strong connotation of breaking up existing monopolies or preventing corporate collusion. 'Competition law' (preferred in the UK and EU) focuses on regulating market behaviour to ensure a level playing field. 'Anti-monopoly' is a narrower term that specifically targets single-supplier dominance, whereas antitrust also covers price-fixing agreements, bid-rigging, and unfair exclusionary practices. For example, a case about three carmakers secretly agreeing on prices is an 'antitrust case' but not strictly an 'anti-monopoly case', since no single company dominates the market.

antitrust ↗competition (law/policy)anti-monopoly

Common collocations

Nouns

Adverbs

Phrases

  • antitrust law
  • antitrust investigation
  • antitrust case
  • antitrust enforcement
  • antitrust policy

Prepositions

Etymology

GreekOld NorseEnglish

Formed in English from the prefix 'anti-' (against) and the noun 'trust', which in this context refers to a 19th-century business arrangement where companies placed their shares under the control of a single board of trustees to dominate an industry. The term entered legal language in the United States with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which was designed to break up such trusts and restore competition.

First known use

1888

1888, in the meaning defined above