greenmail
greenmail noun: the profiting from an attempted hostile takeover by forcing the target company to buy back the hostile bidder's shares at an inflated price.
Noun
greenmail (countable and uncountable, plural greenmails)
- The profiting from an attempted hostile takeover by forcing the target company to buy back the hostile bidder's shares at an inflated price.
- Greenmails typically result in reduced shareholder value.2007, S.R. Vishwanath, Corporate Finance, →ISBN, page 681
- He's gonna leverage his position, and he's gonna get as much greenmail as he can.2013 July 30, Unfinished Business (Suits), season 3, episode 3, spoken by Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman)
Verb
greenmail (third-person singular simple present greenmails, present participle greenmailing, simple past and past participle greenmailed)
- To profit from an attempted hostile takeover by forcing the target company to buy back the hostile bidder's shares at an inflated price.
Forms of greenmail
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | greenmails |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | greenmails |
| present participle | greenmailing |
| past participle | greenmailed |
| past | greenmailed |
Origin of greenmail
Blend of greenback + blackmail.
Words formed from greenmail
Questions about greenmail
- What does greenmail mean?
- Greenmail means the profiting from an attempted hostile takeover by forcing the target company to buy back the hostile bidder's shares at an inflated price.
- What part of speech is greenmail?
- Greenmail can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of greenmail?
- The plural of greenmail is greenmails.
Words near greenmail in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: greenmail (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-greenmail.wav.
Cite this entry: “greenmail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/greenmail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.