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Glite Dictionary
Standard & Poor's

Standard & Poor's

12 4.9
A company that makes lists showing how groups of stocks change in value
  • noun
  • /ˈstændərd ənd pʊrz/
translation icon : Standard & Poor's
  • Standard & Poor's cut Ireland's rating one level to BBB+ with a "stable" outlook on April 1.
  • Standard & Poor's 500
  • Standard & Poor's index
  • Standard & Poor's rating

Examples

  • According to Standard and Poor's, nearly fifty banks are likely to be merged in the coming months.

    Academic text (2010)

  • The effects of the changes in the developed world economy, as measured by the Standard & Poor's 500 index, reinforce what was found with the risk-free interest rate.

    Academic text (2012)

  • Everyone who values democracy should be deeply concerned about what Standard and Poor's is doing right now.

    Blog text (30)

  • Among companies in the Standard and Poor's 500 index, some 20 percent of profits come from European sales.

    Blog text (5)

  • The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday showed increases in all of the 20 cities tracked.

    Blog text (30)

  • The S&P 500 is based on the average performance of the 500 industrial stocks monitored by Standard & Poor's.

    Blog text (5)

  • The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 2 points to 1,355, and the Nasdaq rose a point to 2,837.

    Blog text (17)

  • During that stretch, the benchmark Standard & Poor's has gained 28 percent, the Dow industrials 24 percent.

    Blog text (21)

  • It's not a coincidence that Timothy Geithner met with Standard & Poor's in April to lobby them heavily not to downgrade the US debt.

    Blog text (30)

  • The Standard & Poor's 500 is widely regarded as one of the best indicators of the U.S. stock market.

Surface Forms

Standard & Poor's singular
Standard and Poor's singular

Morphology

standard + & + Poor's

This is a proper name/brand formed from two names (and a conjunction) rather than a compositional phrase whose meaning comes from its parts; knowing 'standard' and 'poor' does not lead a learner to the concept 'major financial services company' or 'S&P 500'. Company names and eponymous constructions are language-specific and non-compositional, so a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would not reliably infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Standard & Poor's comes from a merger long ago between a group called Standard, which made financial lists, and a publisher owned by a man with the last name Poor. That's why the name now stands for the firm that creates market 'standards' like the S&P 500.