commerce

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French commerce, from Latin commercium.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑm.ɚs/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒm.əs/, (dated) /kɒˈmɜːs/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

Noun

commerce (countable and uncountable, plural commerces)

1. (business) The exchange or buying and selling of commodities; especially the exchange of merchandise, on a large scale, between different places or communities; extended trade or traffic.
2. Social intercourse; the dealings of one person or class in society with another; familiarity.
   • Macaulay:

     Fifteen years of thought, observation, and commerce with the world had made him [Bunyan] wiser.

   • 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque:

     Suppose we held our converse not in words, but in music; those who have a bad ear would find themselves cut off from all near commerce, and no better than foreigners in this big world.

3. (obsolete) Sexual intercourse.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of W. Montagu to this entry?)

4. A 19th-century French card game in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Hoyle to this entry?)

Verb

commerce (third-person singular simple present commerces, present participle commercing, simple past and past participle commerced)

1. (dated) To carry on trade; to traffic.

   Beware you commerce not with bankrupts. -B. Jonson.

2. (dated) To hold intercourse; to commune.

   Commercing with himself. -Tennyson.

   Musicians ... taught the people in angelic harmonies to commerce with heaven. -Prof. Wilson.

Further reading

• commerce in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• commerce in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

Etymology

From Middle French commerce, borrowed from Latin commercium (“commerce, trade”), from com- (“together”) + merx (“good, wares, merchandise”); see merchant, mercenary.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɔ.mɛʁs/

• Audio (France, Paris)

  (file)

Noun

commerce m (plural commerces)

1. commerce, trade
2. store, shop, trader

Further reading

• “commerce” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).