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
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
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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
Cite this Entry
“Marginal utility.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marginal%20utility. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.
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