laissez-faire

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 20, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>laissez-faire</strong> &#149; \less-ay-FAIR\&nbsp; &#149; <em>noun</em><br /> <p><em>Laissez-faire</em> refers to an economic policy or doctrine that allows businesses to operate with very little interference from the government. <em>Laissez-faire</em> is also used as an adjective, as in “laissez-faire capitalism,” and often figuratively used to mean “hands-off,” as in “she took a laissez-faire approach to managing her employees.” </p> <p>// The newly-announced candidate is a strong advocate of <em>laissez-faire</em>.</p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/laissez-faire">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>“There is no doubt that our collective viewing during the Christmas period has always been enhanced by the various versions of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.... Dickens’s most popular work was penned at a time when the government policy of <em>laissez-faire</em> was common practice and led directly to social, economic and political inequality, widespread poverty and inequity.” — Owen Kelly [letter to the editor], <em>The National</em> (Glasgow, Scotland), 29 Dec. 2021</p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>The French phrase <em>laissez faire</em> literally means “allow to do,” with the idea being “let people do as they choose.” The origins of <em>laissez-faire</em> are associated with the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/physiocrat">Physiocrats</a>, a group of 18th-century French economists who believed that government policy should not interfere with the operation of natural economic laws. (The actual coiner of the phrase may have been French economist Vincent de Gournay, or it may have been François Quesnay, who is considered the group’s founder and leader.) The original phrase was “<em>laissez