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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

externality.

The state of being external or externalized.

11 characters5 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɛkstəˈnælɪti/Received-Pronunciation/ɛkstɚˈnælɪti/General-American/ekstəˈnælɪti/Australia
  1. The state of being external or externalized.

    uncountable
  2. A thing that is external relative to something else.

    countable
  3. An impact, positive or negative, on any party not involved in a given economic transaction or act.

    countable
    Waste is a negative externality arising from consumption.
Where this word comes from

From external + -ity. In the economic sense coined by British economist Alfred Marshall in 1890.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.