commerce

Borrowed from Middle French commerce, from Latin commercium.

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

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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?)

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

• chamber of commerce
• commercial

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.
   • Ben Jonson

     Beware you commerce not with bankrupts.

2. (intransitive, archaic) To hold intercourse; to commune.
   • Tennyson

     commercing with himself

   • Prof. Wilson

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

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

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)

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commerce m (plural commerces)

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

• commercial

• négoce

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