Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act of employing to the greatest possible advantage.
  • noun Utilization of another person or group for selfish purposes.
  • noun An advertising or publicity program.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act or process of exploiting, making use of, or working up; utilization by the application of industry, argument, or other means of turning to account: as, the exploitation of a mine or a forest, of public opinion, etc.
  • noun Specifically The act of exploiting solely for one's own purposes or advantage; selfish use or employment, regardless of abstract right; self-seeking utilization: as, the exploitation of the weak by the strong, or of the laborer by the capitalist. Also exploitage.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of exploiting or utilizing.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of exploiting or utilizing.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the act of making some area of land or water more profitable or productive or useful
  • noun an act that exploits or victimizes someone (treats them unfairly)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French exploitation

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Examples

  • Therefore, for the most part, when people use the term exploitation in reference to voluntary exchange, they simply disagree with the price.

    Archive 2005-04-01 2005

  • Therefore, for the most part, when people use the term exploitation in reference to voluntary exchange, they simply disagree with the price.

    RE: Minimum Wage 2005

  • Therefore, for the most part, when people use the term exploitation in reference to voluntary exchange, they simply disagree with the price.

    Archive 2005-03-01 2005

  • Therefore, for the most part, when people use the term exploitation in reference to voluntary exchange, they simply disagree with the price.

    Voluntary Exchange or Exploitation? 2005

  • The term exploitation, for example, should be not a moralizing one but a cold measure of the difference between use value and exchange value, or between the wages earned at the coal face and the real worth of that labor to the mine owner.

    unknown title 2009

  • The term exploitation, for example, should be not a moralizing one but a cold measure of the difference between use value and exchange value, or between the wages earned at the coal face and the real worth of that labor to the mine owner.

    unknown title 2009

  • The term exploitation, for example, should be not a moralizing one but a cold measure of the difference between use value and exchange value, or between the wages earned at the coal face and the real worth of that labor to the mine owner.

    unknown title 2009

  • But I think, applied to motives and results -- and with the power differential firmly in mind -- that notion of ethics can go deeper than just dismissing the commodified dreamcatcher as "tacky" like a galleria art snob; and it's not an either/or situation in which the exploitation is an alternative, contradictory reason for condemning the commodified dreamcatcher.

    Archive 2006-09-01 Hal Duncan 2006

  • But I think, applied to motives and results -- and with the power differential firmly in mind -- that notion of ethics can go deeper than just dismissing the commodified dreamcatcher as "tacky" like a galleria art snob; and it's not an either/or situation in which the exploitation is an alternative, contradictory reason for condemning the commodified dreamcatcher.

    The Power and the Piss Hal Duncan 2006

  • The chemical suits are items that are under what we call exploitation at this point.

    CNN Transcript Mar 31, 2003 2003

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