Definition of "commerce"

commerce

/ˈkɒm.əs/

noun
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.
  Quotations
  Fifteen years of thought, observation, and commerce with the world had made him [Bunyan] wiser.
  1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Bunyan, John”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica‎
  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.
  1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque
3. (obsolete) Sexual intercourse.
  Quotations
  these perillous commerces of our love
  1648, Walter Montagu, Miscellanea Spiritualia, or Devout Essaies
4. (card games) An 18th-century French card game in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade.
verb
third-person singular simple present commerces, present participle commercing, simple past and past participle commerced
1. (intransitive, archaic) To carry on trade; to traffic.
  Quotations
  Beware you commerce not with bankrupts.
  1599 (first performance; published 1600), Benjamin Jonson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Euery Man out of His Humour. A Comicall Satyre. […]”, in The Workes of Ben Jonson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)
2. (intransitive, archaic) To hold conversation; to communicate.
  Quotations
  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— […]
  1842, Alfred Tennyson, “Walking to the Mail”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], page 48
  Musicians […] taught the people in angelic harmonies to commerce with heaven.
  1844, John Wilson, Essay on the Genius, and Character of Burns

Definition of "commerce"

commerce

noun

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verb

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