single-peaked
|sin-gle-peaked|
🇺🇸
/ˌsɪŋɡəlˈpiːkt/
🇬🇧
/ˌsɪŋɡ(ə)lˈpiːkt/
one peak
Etymology
'single-peaked' originates from Modern English, specifically by combining the adjective 'single' (meaning 'one' or 'alone') and the past-participial adjective 'peaked' (from 'peak', meaning 'a high point').
'single-peaked' developed as a compound adjective in English and was adopted as a technical term in mid-20th-century social choice and economics literature to describe preference profiles with one peak (notably used in discussions following work by theorists such as Duncan Black).
Initially a literal compound meaning 'having a single peak,' it evolved into a technical term in political science and economics to describe a specific structural property of preferences or distributions.
Meanings by Part of Speech
Adjective 1
in social choice and voting theory: describing a set of preferences (or a preference profile) in which each individual has one most-preferred option and preference decreases as options move away from that peak; preferences can be represented along a single-dimensional spectrum with one peak per agent.
The committee's preferences were single-peaked along the left–right spectrum, which made finding a median policy possible.
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Adjective 2
more generally: having a single peak or maximum (used for distributions, graphs, or shapes).
The histogram was single-peaked, indicating most values clustered near one mode.
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Last updated: 2025/11/21 05:15