- 1
An oligarch is one person inside a small group that holds the real power — in a country, a company, or another large organisation. The setup is an oligarchy; each powerful member is an oligarch. In news English, oligarch often points to a very rich person, especially from Russia and nearby countries after the old Soviet Union broke up, who stands close to political power. That is a common modern picture, but the older, wider sense is simply “one of the few who rule,” rich or not. The word is serious. It is not a joke name for any boss.
寡頭（少數掌權者；新聞裡也常指政商很近的超級富豪）
組成From French oligarque, from Late Latin oligarcha, from Ancient Greek ὀλιγάρχης (oligárkhēs). By the pieces you can still see: olig- (“few”) + -arch (“ruler”).
同家族的字
- oligarchythe system or group in which a few people rule
- oligarchicthe adjective: of or like that kind of rule
- monarchyshares -arch, a ruler — here, one king or queen
- oligopolyshares olig- (“few”); a market with only a few sellers
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
oligarchnoun/ˈɒlɪˌɡɑːk/
- 1
A member of an oligarchy; someone who is part of a small group that runs a country.
- In thus ruling the issue out of court, Lenin implied that there was no problem about the relationship between a class and a party, or a party and its leaders, and that government by a handful of oligarchs can properly be called government by the class they claim to represent […]
- 2
A very wealthy business owner who wields political power.
- Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchs and their supporters were surfeiting on the surplus.
- Economic disaster loomed, as the rotting remains of the Soviet economy were exposed to free-market reforms, which brought inflation and the sale of state-owned assets at low prices to a new class of ultra-rich businessmen called "oligarchs," who made America's robber barons of the late nineteenth century look like Puritan preachers.
- 3
A protoplanet formed during oligarchic accretion.
- In the inner Solar System, only the asteroid Ceres was able to grow fast enough to become a dwarf planet, but in the outer Solar System huge numbers of icy bodies formed, ranging from pebbles to the oligarchs now recognized as dwarf planets.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。