Wiktionary

market price

English edit

Noun edit

market price (plural market prices)

  1. (economics) The price at which a product, financial instrument, service or other tradable item can be bought and sold at an open market; the going price.
    • 1776, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: Book I: Chapter 7: Of the natural and market Price of Commodities
      The actual price at which any commodity is commonly sold is called its market price. It may either be above, or below, or exactly the same with its natural price.
    • 2021 October 20, “Network News: How do operators buy electricity?”, in RAIL, number 942, page 7:
      For those that chose to buy based on their usage (mainly non-franchised freight and open access operators), NR passes on the costs of electricity at the market price for that month, hence the significant increases being experienced by the likes of Freightliner.
  2. On restaurant menus, used to mean the price charged depends on the price of supplies, which may vary.

Usage notes edit

In restaurant sense, particularly used for seafood, especially lobster and oysters, due to seasonality and volatile prices. Used to avoid having to update the menu as prices change, and also functions to avoid listing a particularly high price.

Using menu price is formally only correct if the price of a dish changes because the price of ingredients changes (as for seafood), not if the price of the dish changes due to the composition changing (as on a cheese platter), for which as quoted (aq) should properly be used instead, as the more general term. However, as quoted is relatively little-used and unfamiliar, while market price is far more often used and more familiar.

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