commerce

Borrowed from Middle French commerce, from Latin commercium.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒm.əs/, (verb, dated) /kəˈmɜːs/

  • Audio (UK)

    (file)

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑ.mɚs/, (verb, dated) /kəˈmɝs/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• Rhymes: (Received Pronunciation) -ɒməs, (Received Pronunciation, dated) -ɜːs

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.
   • 1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Bunyan, John”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica‎:

     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.

   carnal commerce

   • 1648, Walter Montagu, Miscellanea Spiritualia, or Devout Essaies:

     these perillous commerces of our love

4. (card games) An 18th-century French card game in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade.[1]

• trade, traffic, dealings, intercourse, interchange, communion, communication
• See also Thesaurus:copulation

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

1. (intransitive, archaic) To carry on trade; to traffic.
   • 1599 (first performance; published 1600), Beniamin Ionson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Euery Man out of His Humour. A Comicall Satyre. […]”, in The Workes of Beniamin Ionson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

     Beware you commerce not with bankrupts.

2. (intransitive, archaic) To hold conversation; to communicate.
   • 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “Walking to the Mail”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 48:

     No, sir, he, / Vex'd with a morbid devil in his blood / That veil'd the world with jaundice, hid his face / From all men, and commercing with himself, / He lost the sense that handles daily life— […]

   • 1844, John Wilson, Essay on the Genius, and Character of Burns:

     Musicians […] taught the people in angelic harmonies to commerce with heaven.

• “commerce”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “commerce”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

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

• IPA^(key): /kɔ.mɛʁs/

• Audio (France, Paris)

  (file)

commerce m (plural commerces)

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

• commerce équitable
• commercial
• café du commerce
• fonds de commerce

• négoce

• “commerce”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

From French commerce (“commerce”).

commerce

1. business, commerce

• Alcée Fortier, Louisiana Folktales