Word.ws English Dictionary

grey market

grey market noun: the buying and selling of goods through distribution channels other than those authorized or intended by the manufacturer or producer.

Noun

grey market (plural grey markets)

  1. The buying and selling of goods through distribution channels other than those authorized or intended by the manufacturer or producer.
    • The shortages have given rise to a grey market last seen shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, petrol is now openly advertised on Telegram and the marketplace website Avito, with sellers in Russian-occupied Crimea offering to deliver fuel by taxi within four...2026 July 7, Pjotr Sauer, “Russian cities feel the pinch amid worsening fuel shortages”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
    Synonyms:
    parallel market
  2. The trading of shares before they are listed on the stock exchange.

Synonyms of grey market

Forms of grey market

pluralgrey markets
alternative formgray market

Origin of grey market

By analogy with black market.

Words formed from grey market

Questions about grey market

What does grey market mean?
Grey market means the buying and selling of goods through distribution channels other than those authorized or intended by the manufacturer or producer.
What part of speech is grey market?
Grey market is a noun.
What is the plural of grey market?
The plural of grey market is grey markets.

Words near grey market in the dictionary

  1. grey line
  2. grey lines
  3. grey literature
  4. grey magic
  5. grey magick
  6. grey market
  7. grey marketeer
  8. grey marketeers
  9. grey markets
  10. grey matter
  11. grey monitor

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grey market (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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Cite this entry: “grey market.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grey_market. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.