Word.ws English Dictionary

homo economicus

homo economicus is the alternative form of Homo economicus.

Proper noun capitalized: Homo economicus

Homo economicus

  1. A human being regarded as a rational and narrowly self-interested actor capable of making judgments in order to attain its own particular goals.

Synonyms of homo economicus

Forms of homo economicus

alternative formhomo economicus
alternative formhomo oeconomicus

Origin of homo economicus

A pseudotaxonomic name, by analogy with Homo sapiens. The earlier term economic man was used for the first time in the late nineteenth century by critics of John Stuart Mill's work on political economy.

Questions about homo economicus

What does homo economicus mean?
Homo economicus means a human being regarded as a rational and narrowly self-interested actor capable of making judgments in order to attain its own particular goals.
What is homo economicus the alternative form of?
Homo economicus is the alternative form of Homo economicus.
What part of speech is homo economicus?
Homo economicus is a proper noun.

Words near homo economicus in the dictionary

  1. hommocky
  2. hommos
  3. hommus
  4. homo
  5. homo Aristophaneus
  6. homo economicus
  7. homo faber
  8. Homo idioticus
  9. Homo insipiens
  10. homo ludens
  11. homo milk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: homo economicus (page history and authors); Homo economicus (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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