laissez-faire
/ˌlɛseɪˈfɛː
/ /lɛsefɛʀ/noun [mass noun, usually as modifier]
1The policy of leaving things to take their own course, without interfering: a laissez-faire attitude to life...
- That doesn't mean advocating a policy of laissez-faire; it means helping all people to work together for their common good.
- For example, the hunting of musk-oxen was banned at the end of World War I, but generally policy was laissez-faire.
- David J. Hanson, a retired professor from nearby Syracuse University, has studied youth drinking and likes Montreal's laissez-faire policies.
1.1 Economics Abstention by governments from interfering in the workings of the free market: laissez-faire capitalism...
- The original Western nineteenth-century route to modernization was associated with laissez-faire capitalism, individualism, and democracy.
- In all of his complaining about laissez-faire and the free market, Polanyi somehow overlooks probably the single most important aspect of this system: freedom.
- The laissez-faire philosophy of competitive capitalism translated into untold misery for the laboring classes in industrial cities.
Synonyms
free enterprise, private enterprise, free trade, individualism, non-intervention, free-market capitalism, private ownership, market forces, deregulation;
non-interference, non-involvement, indifference
Derivatives
laissez-faireism
- Have you noticed how laisser-faireism has become the pervading truth?
Origin
French, literally 'allow to do'.
Rhymes
- shout line
- shout-out
- shout something from the housetops
- shout something from the rooftops
- shout the odds
- shouty
- shove
- shove-halfpenny
- shovel
- shovelboard
- shoveler
- shovelful
- shovel hat
- shovelhead
- shovelhead shark
- shoveller
- shovel pass
- shovel-ready
- shovel-spear
- shovelware
- shove off
- shove up
- show
- Showa
- show a leg