Editing Privatization (section)

== Etymology ==
The term ''privatizing'' first appeared in English, with quotation marks, in the ''[[New York Times]]'', in April 1923, in a translation of a German speech referring to the potential for German state railroads to be bought by American companies.<ref>{{Cite news |orig-date=7 April 1923 |title=Asserts Americans 'Plot' With French |pages=4 |work=The New York Times |date=7 April 1923 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1923/04/07/archives/asserts-americans-plot-with-french-german-engineer-calls-ruhr.html}}</ref> In German, the word ''[[:de:Privatisierung|Privatisierung]]'' has been used since at least the 19th century.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kämmerer |first=Jörn Axel |title=Privatisierung |publisher=Mohr Siebeck |year=2001 |isbn=978-3-16-147515-3 |location=Tübingen |language=de}}</ref> Ultimately, the word came to German through French from the Latin {{lang|la|privatus}}.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Privatisieren |url=https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/privatisieren |website=Duden}}</ref>

The term ''reprivatization'', again translated directly from German ({{lang|de|Reprivatisierung}}), was used frequently in the mid-1930s as ''[[The Economist]]'' reported on Nazi Germany's sale of nationalized banks back to public shareholders following the 1931 economic crisis.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Bel |first=Germa |date=Summer 2006 |title=The Coining of "Privatization" and Germany's National Socialist Party |journal=Journal of Economic Perspectives |volume=20 |issue=3 |pages=187–194|doi=10.1257/jep.20.3.187 |s2cid=33815402 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

The word became common in the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of UK prime minister [[Thatcherism|Margaret Thatcher's economic policies]]. She was drawing on the work of the pro-privatization Member of Parliament [[David Howell, Baron Howell of Guildford|David Howell]], who was himself drawing on the Austrian-American management expert [[Peter Drucker]]'s 1969 book, ''The Age of Discontinuity''.<ref name=":3" />