MERCANTILE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Mercantile

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/mˈərkəntˌaɪl/ Listen

adjective

Mercantile adj. Of or pertaining to merchants, or the business of merchants; having to do with trade, or the buying and selling of commodities; commercial. "The expedition of the Argonauts was partly mercantile, partly military."

Mercantile agency, an agency for procuring information of the standing and credit of merchants in different parts of the country, for the use of dealers who sell to them.

Mercantile marine, the persons and vessels employed in commerce, taken collectively.

Mercantile paper, the notes or acceptances given by merchants for goods bought, or received on consignment; drafts on merchants for goods sold or consigned.

Synonyms: Mercantile, Commercial. Commercial is the wider term, being sometimes used to embrace mercantile. In their stricter use, commercial relates to the shipping, freighting, forwarding, and other business connected with the commerce of a country (whether external or internal), that is, the exchange of commodities; while mercantile applies to the sale of merchandise and goods when brought to market. As the two employments are to some extent intermingled, the two words are often interchanged.

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Etymology of 'Mercantile'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mercantile" Quotes from Famous Books

... the localities from which silver was obtained in more ancient times are less known, it is certain that it was used at a very remote period; and (as before stated) it was commonly employed in Abraham's time for mercantile transactions. ...

— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... but good mercantile paper, a notorious coward, had made itself wings and fled, and specie was creeping into strong boxes like a startled rabbit into its hole. The fine was paid; but Beaurepaire had to be heavily mortgaged, and the loan bore a high rate of interest. ...

— White Lies • Charles Reade

... progress of constitutional government can be most accurately traced, there was a time when the landowning aristocracy controlled the franchise and elected the members of Parliament. The dawn of a sense of injustice in the minds of the mercantile classes brought with it a demand for the extension of the suffrage, which was of course vigorously combated. It was an illogical resistance, which ended in the admission of the tradesmen. Later the workingmen awakened to their political disability and asserted ...

— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... societies, small respect for the common forms of labour. But in Old Japan the occupations of the farmer and the artizan were not despised: trade alone appears to have been considered degrading,—and the discrimination may have been partly a moral one. The relegation of the mercantile class to the lowest place in the social scale must have produced some curious results. However rich, for example, a rice-dealer might be, he ranked below the carpenters or potters or boat-builders whom he might employ,—unless it happened that his family originally belonged to another class. ...

— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... all employed in commerce during the day; but in the evening, VOYEZ-VOUS, NOUS SOMMES SERIEUX.' These were the words. They were all employed over the frivolous mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; but in the evening they found some hours for the serious concerns of life. I may have a wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very wise remark. People connected with literature and philosophy are busy all their days in getting rid of second-hand notions ...

— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

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