Definition of "company"

“ […] That woman is stark mad, Lord Stranleigh. […] If she had her way, she’d ruin the company inside a year with her hare-brained schemes; love of the people, and that sort of guff.”

1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎

In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […] The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra-wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.

2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly‎, volume 188, number 23, page 19

According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.

2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist‎, volume 407, number 8839, page 95

Come, O thou Traveller unknown, / Whom still I hold, but cannot see! / My company before is gone, / And I am left alone with Thee; / With Thee all night I mean to stay, / And wrestle till the break of day.

1742, “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown”, Charles Wesley (music)

At length, one night, when the company by ſome accident broke up much ſooner than ordinary, ſo that the candles were not half burnt out, ſhe was not able to reſiſt the temptation, but reſolved to have them ſome way or other. Accordingly, as ſoon as the hurry was over, and the ſervants, as ſhe thought, all gone to ſleep, ſhe ſtole out of her bed, and went down ſtairs, naked to her ſhift as ſhe was, with a deſign to ſteal them […]

1762, Charles Johnstone, The Reverie; or, A Flight to the Paradise of Fools‎, volume 2, Dublin: Printed by Dillon Chamberlaine, page 202

The departure was not unduly prolonged. In the road Mr. Love and the driver favoured the company with a brief chanty running. “Got it?—No, I ain't, 'old on,—Got it? Got it?—No, 'old on sir.”

1922, Ben Travers, chapter 5, in A Cuckoo in the Nest

He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., page 2

Ye dooe knowe howe thatt hytt ys an unlawefull thynge for a man beynge a iewe to company or come unto an alient […] .

1526, William, trans. Tyndale, Bible, acts X

it was with a distinctly fallen countenance that his father hearkened to his mother's parenthetical request to “’bide hyar an’ company leetle Moses whilst I be a-milkin’ the cow.”

1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska, published 2005, page 2

Men which have companied with us all the time.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Acts 1:21

If thee list unto the Court to throng […] there thou needs must learne, to laugh, to lie, To face, to forge, to scoffe, to companie.

1591, Ed[mund] Sp[enser], “Prosopopoia. Or Mother Hubberds Tale.”, in Complaints. Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie. […], London: […] William Ponsonbie, […]

companying with Infidels may not be simply condemned

a. 1656, Joseph Hall, Epistle to Mr. I. F.