Word.ws English Dictionary

greenovator

greenovator noun: a consumer focusing on environmental and sustainability concerns rather than prestige offered by the opportunity of owning a luxury item.

Noun

greenovator (plural greenovators)

  1. (neologism) A consumer focusing on environmental and sustainability concerns rather than prestige offered by the opportunity of owning a luxury item.
    • Peter Nierengarten, Director of Sustainability and Resilience for Fayetteville, AR, told me how he participated in an hour-long discussion about the use of the term sustainability at the 2012 USDN meeting in Portland, OR. Cities are using terms such as livable (Milwaukee), homegrown (Minneapolis)...2015 July 16, Myria Allen, “Changing Paradigms, Shifting Societal Discourses, and Organizational Responses”, in Strategic Communication for Sustainable Organizations. Theory and Practice, Springer...
    • The Greenovators are particularly interested in small vehicles, with the most advanced low-emission technologies, and electric vehicles.2019 October 4, Elena Candelo, “Towards the 2030s: Unusual Times Call for Unusual Strategies”, in Marketing Innovations in the Automotive Industry. Meeting the Challenges of the Digital Age, volume...

Forms of greenovator

pluralgreenovators
alternative formGreenovator

Origin of greenovator

Blend of green + innovator. First introduced in a German-language 2009 study on customer segments of automobiles by management consulting firm Arthur D. Little Zukunft der Mobilität 2020 – Die Automobilindustrie im Umbruch?, though it seemingly circulated under the radar with American city engineers.

Questions about greenovator

What does greenovator mean?
Greenovator means a consumer focusing on environmental and sustainability concerns rather than prestige offered by the opportunity of owning a luxury item.
What part of speech is greenovator?
Greenovator is a noun.
What is the plural of greenovator?
The plural of greenovator is greenovators.

Words near greenovator in the dictionary

  1. Greenos
  2. Greenough
  3. Greenoughs
  4. greenout
  5. greenouts
  6. greenovator
  7. greenovators
  8. greenovite
  9. Greenpeace
  10. Greenpeacer
  11. Greenpeacers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: greenovator (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-greenovator.wav.

Cite this entry: “greenovator.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/greenovator. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.