Definition of "business"

The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them, which is then licensed to related businesses in high-tax countries, is often assumed to be the preserve of high-tech companies.

2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68

In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%. That means about $165 billion was spent not on drumming up business, but on annoying people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters.

2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist‎, volume 407, number 8837, page 74

Policing the relationship between government and business in a free society is difficult. Businesspeople have every right to lobby governments, and civil servants to take jobs in the private sector.

2013 August 10, Schumpeter, “Cronies and capitols”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848

To know the naturall cause of Sense, is not very necessary to the business now in hand; and I have els-where written of the same at large.

1651, Thomas Hobbes, “Chapter I: Of Sense”, in Leviathan‎Wikisource

Gates, who always flew business or coach, didn't particularly like the high air fares Nishi was charging to Microsoft, […]

1992, James Wallace, Jim Erickson, Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire‎, page 154

The business with the hat is a fine example of the difficulty of distinguishing between 'natural' and 'formal' acting.

1983, Peter Thomson, Shakespeare's Theatre‎, page 155

I'm sure his goons will go through the ship like a business of ferrets, and they'll want to look in our baggage.

2004, Dave Duncan, The Jaguar Knights: A Chronicle of the King's Blades‎, page 252

They are solely business instruments. Every man's relation to them is purely a business relation. His use of them is purely a business use.

1897, Reform Club (New York, N.Y.) Sound Currency Committee, Sound Currency‎, volumes 4-5, page cclii

With a little manœuvring they contrived to meet on the doorstep which was […] in a boiling stream of passers-by, hurrying business people speeding past in a flurry of fumes and dust in the bright haze.

1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 10, in The China Governess‎

[…] the fact that the injured party came to the insured premises for solely business purposes precluded any reliance on the non-business pursuits exception (§ 1 1 2[b]).

1996, Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company, American Law Reports: Annotations and Cases‎, volume 35, page 432

Both of these partnerships have to cope with these dual issues in a more complicated way than is the case in solely business partnerships.

2003, Marvin Snider, Compatibility Breeds Success: How to Manage Your Relationship with Your Business Partner‎, page 298

He is thoroughly business, but has the happy faculty of transacting it in a genial and courteous manner.

1889, The Clothier and furnisher‎, volume 19, page 38

[…] and the transaction carried through in a thoroughly business manner.

1909, Business Administration: Business Practice‎, La Salle Extension University, page 77

Sometimes this very subtle contrast becomes only too visible, as when in wartime Jewish business men were almost lynched because they were thoroughly business men and worked for profit.

1927, “Making of America Project”, in Harper's Magazine‎, volume 154, page 502

The moral is evident: do not invest in schemes promising enormous and quick returns unless you have investigated them in a thoroughly business manner.

2009, Frank Channing Haddock, Business Power: Supreme Business Laws and Maxims that Win Wealth‎, page 231

Amiens is a thoroughly business town, the business being chiefly with the flax-works.

1867, “Amiens”, in Edmund Hodgson Yates, editor, Tinsley's Magazine‎, page 430

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 55