trade

Pronunciation

• IPA: /treɪd/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English trade (“path, track, course”), borrowed from Middle Low German trade (“track, course”) or Middle Dutch trade,^[2][3][4] introduced through Hanseatic merchants, presumably of a ship's course.^[2][3] It is cognate with Old Saxon trada (“footstep, track”), Old High German trata (“track, way”) and Old English tredan (“to tread”), the source of tread.^[3][2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A path, track, course of action: about 1375,^[3][5] senses now obsolete.^[2]

Semantic evolution

A course or manner of life is from 1456,^[5] or the mid-15th century.^[2] Trench explains that trade was properly the path we tread, and so the habitual manner of one's life.^[6] One's habitual business or occupation, especially a skilled craft, is from the 1540s,^[2] or the early 16th century,^[7] and buying and selling from the 1550s.^[2][7] By the 1650s anything practised for a living was a trade.^[2] The Trade has meant the London booksellers since 1697.^[2] The trade wind (1640s) has nothing to do with commerce: it keeps the old sense “in a regular course”.^[2][8][7] The verb meant “to tread a path” in the 1540s, “to engage in commerce” from the 1560s, and “to barter” by 1793.^[2] An exchange of players between teams is by 1913, and the verb in this sense from 1899.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1375 – a path, course.^[3][5]
• 1456 – a way of life.^[5]
• 1540s – an occupation; verb, to tread.^[2]
• 1550s – commerce.^[2]
• 1640s – trade wind.^[2]
• 1697 – the Trade, booksellers.^[2]
• 1793 – verb, to barter.^[2]
• 1913 – an exchange of players.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The business of buying and selling goods; commerce.
2. An occupation, especially a skilled manual one; a craft.
3. The people working in a business or industry; its customers.
4. An act of buying or selling; an exchange of one thing for another.
5. trades: the trade winds.

Verb

1. To engage in buying and selling.
2. To exchange one thing for another; to barter.
3. To buy and sell shares or commodities.

Word family

• tradable
• tradeless
• untraded
• cross-trade
• outtrade
• overtrade
• retrade
• trade down

Related words

• tread
• trader
• tradesman
• trade wind
• trademark

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Trench, Richard Chenevix (1859), A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present, London: John W. Parker
7. ^ a b c Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press