In Japan, a large capitalist organization, usually based on a single family having controlling interests in a variety of companies, of a type that existed before the war of 1939–45; since 1947, a cartel or conglomerate. Also, the members of such an enterprise.
1937
These concerns are popularly known in Japan as the Zaibatsu or money-cliques.
Economic Journalvol. 47 272
1947
A chosen financial oligarchy, the famous Zaibatsu.
R. Benedict, Chrysanthemum & Sword iv. 93
1957
The zaibatsu and the landlords.
Pacific Affairsvol. 30 219
1959
By getting the right people to sit for you. The zaibatsu. The Royal Family.
R. Kirkbride, Tamiko (1960) vi. 41
1964
While the companies being merged presently are old Zaibatsu connected firms, and the groups are sponsoring the moves, the economics of the mergers themselves have little to do with such connections.
Asia Magazine 26 July 15/2
1965
The Zaibatsu are becoming concerned about the problems of seniority and management.
Economist 11 December 1219/2
1970
A zaibatsu is similar to a U.S. conglomerate, which is also a group of unrelated companies under sophisticated financial management.
Scientific American March 31/2
1974
When a community, historically prone to become the victim of unreason, finds itself in a position of success amid failure, its only recourse is probably to go to ground. The Japanese Zaibatsu understood this; a really successful Japanese business man was and is rarely obtrusive.
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛtl/ but /ˈpɛtl̩i/.
Vowels
iːfleece
ihappy
ɪkit
ɛdress
atrap, bath
ɑːstart, palm, bath
ɒlot
ɔːthought, force
ʌstrut
ʊfoot
uːgoose
əletter
əːnurse
ɪənear
ɛːsquare
ʊəcure
eɪface
ʌɪpride
aʊmouth
əʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ãgratin
ɒ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
Simple text respell breaks words into syllables, separated by a hyphen. The syllable which carries the primary stress is written in capital letters. This key covers both British and U.S. English Simple Text Respell.
Consonants
b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w and z have their standard English values
gguy
jjay
yyore
chchore
khloch
shshore
ththaw
dhthee
zhbeige
Vowels
atrap
ahpalm
airsquare
arstart
arrcarry (British only)
awthought
ayface
a(ng)gratin
edress
eefleece
eerdeer
errmerry
ikit
ighpride
irrmirror
olot (British only)
ohgoat
oogoose
oorcure
orforce
orrsorry (British only)
owmouth
oyvoice
o(ng)salon
ustrut
uhletter
urnurse
urrhurry
uufoot
Forms
Variant forms
Also Zaibatsu.
Frequency
zaibatsu typically occurs about 0.3 times per million words in modern written English.
zaibatsu is in frequency band 4, which contains words occurring between 0.1 and 1 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of zaibatsu, n., 1930–2010
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.
The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole, n.¹, mole, n.², mole, n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.
Decade
Frequency per million words
1930
0.081
1940
0.11
1950
0.15
1960
0.22
1970
0.28
1980
0.28
1990
0.28
2000
0.27
2010
0.24
zaibatsu, n. was first published in 1986; not fully revised.