Our modern word ‘cartel’ originated in Germany at the start of the 20th century and means ‘an agreement or association between two or more business houses for regulating output or fixing prices’ (Oxford).
Many governments have laws making such ‘cartel’ agreements illegal (in order to keep the free market free!).
But with international bodies there is no way of regulating or stopping them, and so cartels flourish internationally.
The most famous is probably OPEC—the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
This cartel controls the flow and price of crude oil.
OPEC has been in the news recently because one member nation, the UAE (United Arab Emirates) has pulled out of OPEC.
By withdrawing, the UAE will now be able to independently decide how much oil it produces and sells.
This matters – and not just because the UAE is one of the world’s top ten oil producers.
The country also has the capacity to increase its output by about one million barrels per day.
What interests me as the Wordman is this word ‘cartel.’
Behind it is the German word kartel, and behind that in turn is a French word (with related words in Italian and Spanish)—and behind them all is the medieval Latin word for ‘paper.’
In other words, it was applied in this context because the agreement that bound together all the participants in a cartel was written down on paper.
It was the paper that bound them all together.
This means the word ‘cartel’ shares a common source with ‘cartridge’—originally a ‘case in which the exact charge of powder for firearms is made up’, and that case was (at least to begin with, back in 1579) made from paper or parchment.
‘Cartel’ is also related to the word ‘cartoon’ which came into English (in 1684) from the Italian word for thick, rigid paper.
Even our word ‘card’ comes this same source, as does the box we call a ‘carton.’
That’s what fascinates us wordies—the common Latin source for such a wide range of words: cartel, cartridge, card, cartoon and carton.
They started out being made from paper!
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