oligarchs

Noun

oligarch (plural oligarchs)

1. A member of an oligarchy; someone who is part of a small group that runs a country.
   • In thus ruling the issue out of court, Lenin implied that there was no problem about the relationship between a class and a party, or a party and its leaders, and that government by a handful of oligarchs can properly be called government by the class they claim to represent […]1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in...
2. A very wealthy business owner who wields political power.
   • Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchs and their supporters were surfeiting on the surplus.1908 February 19, Jack London, chapter 17, in The Iron Heel, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, page 251

   Synonyms:

   plutocrat, tycoonocrat

3. (cosmogony) A protoplanet formed during oligarchic accretion.
   • In the inner Solar System, only the asteroid Ceres was able to grow fast enough to become a dwarf planet, but in the outer Solar System huge numbers of icy bodies formed, ranging from pebbles to the oligarchs now recognized as dwarf planets.2016, Michael A. Seeds, Dana Backman, Foundations of Astronomy, Enhanced