marginal utility

noun

: the amount of additional utility provided by an additional unit of an economic good or service

Examples of marginal utility in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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As consumers consume more of a product, the marginal utility tends to diminish. Abdo Riani, Forbes, 29 Feb. 2024 Iguodala still had marginal utility as a back-end rotation piece. The Salt Lake Tribune, 6 Feb. 2022 Perhaps, Berwald opines, the popularity of the move to ban oxybenzone owes as much to a desire to do something in the face of the threats to coral reefs, even if that something is of marginal utility. Tim Flannery, The New York Review of Books, 4 Nov. 2021 But in this case the main beneficiaries are likely the intermediaries, the for-profit institutions which provide trivial marginal utility to many students while charging for nearly worthless credentials. Discover Magazine, 5 Nov. 2019

Word History

First Known Use

1890, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of marginal utility was in 1890

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Cite this Entry

“Marginal utility.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marginal%20utility. Accessed 9 Sep. 2025.

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