Etymologically
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trade

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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
  • 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