Article: Consumption

CONSUMPTION

CONSUMPTION. It is not coincidental that the Latin word consumere, 'to use up', referring chiefly to food, has come to stand for the act of purchasing and using all variety of goods. This meaning developed at the same time that merchants succeeded in changing the nature of consumption in the course of the early modern period. In the early sixteenth century, consumption for the vast majority of people meant almost exclusively eating food, on which the bulk of most people's household income was spent. By the end of the eighteenth century a much greater proportion of people had become consumers in the modern sense of the word: 'those who use their income to purchase products ...

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