greenmail

noun

green·​mail ˈgrēn-ˌmāl 

: the practice of buying enough of a company's stock to threaten a hostile takeover and reselling it to the company at a price above market value

also : the money paid for such stock

greenmail transitive verb

greenmailer

ˈgrēn-ˌmā-lər 

noun

Did you know?

Greenmail is a recent English coinage, but its history spans a millennium. In the Anglo-Saxon historical records for 1086, we find an early use of a word that still survives in Scottish English as mail, meaning "payment" or "rent." The 16th century saw the appearance of the compound blackmail, which was originally a tribute that freebooting chiefs at the Scottish border exacted in exchange for immunity from pillage. In 1862, the U.S. government began printing paper money using green ink, and soon the word green came to suggest money. Finally, in the 1980s, greenmail was coined by combining green and blackmail to describe a particular type of financial piracy.

Examples of greenmail in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Musk’s current war against Twitter might simply be posturing for greenmail. —Robert Zafft, Forbes, 15 Apr. 2022

That comes out to an obscene $225,000 per job for factory work, proving that neither party, and few states, can control the scourge of corporate greenmail. —Dan Haar, courant.com, 7 Aug. 2017

Word History

First Known Use

1983, in the meaning defined above

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Legal Definition

greenmail

noun

green·​mail ˈgrēn-ˌmāl 

: the practice of buying enough of a company's stock to threaten a hostile takeover and reselling it to the company at a price above market value

also : the money paid for such stock

greenmail transitive verb

greenmailer noun

Etymology

green (money) + -mail (as in blackmail)