consortium
Americannoun
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consortia,
plural
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consortiums
plural
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a combination of financial institutions, capitalists, etc., for carrying into effect some financial operation requiring large resources of capital.
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any association, partnership, or union.
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Law. the legal right of partners in a marriage to companionship and conjugal intercourse with each other.
In a wrongful death action the surviving spouse commonly seeks damages for loss of consortium.
noun
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an association of financiers, companies, etc, esp one formed for a particular purpose
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law the right of husband or wife to the company, assistance, and affection of the other
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of consortium
1820–30; < Latin: partnership, equivalent to consort- consort + -ium -ium
Explanation
Consortium is a fancy word for a group you form for an enterprise beyond what any one member could do alone. All the grocery stores in your neighborhood might form a consortium for the promotion of local strawberries. Consortium comes from the verb consort, which means "to accompany or associate." Consortium used to mean "fellowship, participation, society," but these days you're more likely to hear consortium for an association of different institutions like schools or companies than, say, a consortium of philosophical frog lovers. Still, consortiums usually preserve the ideals of fellowship, with every member institution chipping in to reach a common goal.
Vocabulary lists containing consortium
The Boys in the Boat
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"Simon's Saga," Vocabulary from Episode 25
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The Gene
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The work was carried out through the Bat1K consortium, a global effort dedicated to sequencing the genomes of all living bat species and co-founded by UCD Professor Emma Teeling.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 30, 2026
Assistant Professors Graham Hughes and Zixia Huang, both from UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science, also contributed to the project through the international Bat1K consortium.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 30, 2026
It was bought by a consortium of investors last year, with actor Ashton Kutcher joining the company's board.
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
Porsche completed the sale of its stakes in Bugatti Rimac and Rimac Group to a consortium led by HOF Capital.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
Rabi stitched together the new lab’s sponsoring consortium, known as Associated Universities, from nine large Eastern research institutions that would have been hard pressed to compete individually in the multimillion-dollar world of postwar high-energy physics.*
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
But consortia funding these projects include publicly traded companies.
From Barron's ● Apr. 12, 2026
"Most large atlases like this require large consortia with dozens of laboratories but our method is far more efficient than other approaches."
From Science Daily ● Feb. 28, 2026
Financial institutions are now forming consortia for cross-border settlement.
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 16, 2026
The federally funded research center employs about 830 staff, making it one of the largest consortia of scientists who study weather, climate and Earth systems using advanced models and supercomputers in the world.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 17, 2025
There are hundreds of public-private partnerships and consortia, such as the Protein Data Bank, that are advancing the frontiers of biomedicines with university assistance.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025
As the model continues to grow across the game globally, it remains to be seen just how consortiums will adapt to manage all of their assets, and whether fans will continue to accept it.
From Barron's ● Jan. 6, 2026
The legacy media is facing all kinds of financial reversals, and I think it’s tied up in the ownership of a lot of papers by big corporate consortiums who have to worry about their shareholders.
From Slate ● Dec. 11, 2024
Those companies formed consortiums with PGZ and its subsidiaries, which signed the final deal with the Polish government, he said.
From Reuters ● May 29, 2023
But two consortiums, one involving former Worcester chief executive Jim O'Toole, have expressed an interest in buying the club out of administration.
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2022
Abramovich will sell the club after 19 years as owner, with four consortiums locked in a bidding battle.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 2, 2022
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
