exploitation

Borrowed from French exploitation, from exploiter (“exploit”), from Latin explicō (“unfold, deploy”).

• IPA^(key): /ˌɛkˌsplɔɪˈteɪʃn̩/
• Rhymes: -eɪʃən
• Hyphenation: ex‧ploi‧ta‧tion

exploitation (countable and uncountable, plural exploitations)

1. The act of utilizing something; industry.
   • 1936, Harold Laski, “The Rise of European Liberalism”, in Collected Works of Harold Laski, London: Routledge, published 1997, page 20:

     Whereas in the middle ages the idea of acquiring wealth was limited by a body of moral rules imposed under the sanction of religious authority, after 1500 those rules, and the institutions, habits, and ideas to which they had given birth, were no longer deemed adequate. They were felt as constraint. There were evaded, criticized, abandoned, because it was felt that they interfered with the exploitation of the means of production.

2. The improper use of something for selfish purposes.

   the exploitation of children in beauty pageants

3. The act or result of forcibly depriving someone of something to which she or he has a natural right.

   Undocumented migrants are vulnerable to exploitation

• exploit
• exploitable

• "exploitation" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 130.

exploiter +‎ -ation, Medieval Latin exploitationem

• IPA^(key): /ɛks.plwa.ta.sjɔ̃/

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exploitation f (plural exploitations)

1. exploitation

• “exploitation” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).