Noun

commerce (uncountable)

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.

3. Sexual intercourse.
4. A round game at cards, in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade.

Synonyms

• trade; traffic; dealings; intercourse; interchange; communion; communication.
• See also Wikisaurus:sexual intercourse

Derived terms

• chamber of commerce
• commercial

Commerce is a division of trade or production which deals with the exchange of goods and services from producer to final consumer OR commerce is the exchange of goods and services from the point of production to the point of consumption to satisfy human wants. It comprises the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information, or money between two or more entities. Commerce functions as the central mechanism which drives capitalism and certain other economic systems (but compare command economy, for example). Commercialization or commercialisation consists of the process of transforming something into a product, service or activity which one may then use in commerce. Commerce involves trade and aids to trade which help in the exchange of goods and services.

Trade is the voluntary exchange of goods, services, or both, also called commerce. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and services. Modern traders instead generally negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money.

Sourced

• Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.
  • Anders Chydenius, The National Gain, §2, 1765.

• Trade is the mother of money.
  • Thomas Draxe (1633), reported in George Latimer Apperson, English proverbs and proverbial phrases: a historical dictionary (1929), p. 643.

• Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails, And honour sinks where commerce long prevails.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller, Line 91.

• The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Larkin Smith (1809).

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Sat Jul 31 07:32:07 2010