Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

private sector

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.55 in modern English

Syllables: pri-vate -sec-tor
IPA

20

Scrabble Score

13

Letters

4

Syllables

10

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

All organizations in an economy or jurisdiction that are not controlled by government, including privately owned businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

Example Sentences

"After spending two decades at various government agencies, he returned to the private sector and took a job as a business consultant."
"Policing the relationship between government and business in a free society is difficult. Businesspeople have every right to lobby governments, and civil servants to take jobs in the private sector."
"After decades of observation, it's pretty obvious to me that all governments are uniformly useless at actually running anything, so we need to employ the private sector to do the job for us on properly specified contracts [...]."

Etymology

private + sector

Inflected Forms

private sectors (plural)

Phrases

public sector

Frequently Paired Words

public sector

Antonyms

public sector

Questions

What does private sector mean?: All organizations in an economy or jurisdiction that are not controlled by government, including privately owned businesses and not-for-profit organizations.
Where does private sector come from?: private + sector

How to pronounce private sector

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “private sector”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.
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Repeat and practice — Say “private sector” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.