What is "commerce"

Commerce \Com"merce\, n. Note: (Formerly accented on the second syllable.) [F. commerce, L. commercium; com- + merx, mercis, merchandise. See Merchant.]

1. The exchange or buying and selling of commodities; esp. the exchange of merchandise, on a large scale, between different places or communities; extended trade or traffic.

   The public becomes powerful in proportion to the opulence and extensive commerce of private men.
   --Hume.

2. Social intercourse; the dealings of one person or class in society with another; familiarity.

   Fifteen years of thought, observation, and commerce with the world had made him [Bunyan] wiser.
   --Macaulay.

3. Sexual intercourse.
   --W. Montagu.

4. A round game at cards, in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade.
   --Hoyle.

   Chamber of commerce. See Chamber.

   Syn: Trade; traffic; dealings; intercourse; interchange; communion; communication.

Commerce \Com*merce"\ (? or ?), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Commerced; p. pr. & vb. n. Commercing.] [Cf. F. commercer, fr. LL. commerciare.]

1. To carry on trade; to traffic. [Obs.]

   Beware you commerce not with bankrupts.
   --B. Jonson.

2. To hold intercourse; to commune.
   --Milton.

   Commercing with himself.
   --Tennyson.

   Musicians . . . taught the people in angelic harmonies to commerce with heaven.
   --Prof. Wilson.

1530s, from Middle French commerce (14c.), from Latin commercium "trade, trafficking," from com- "together" (see com-) + merx (genitive mercis) "merchandise" (see market (n.)).

n. 1 (context business English) The exchange or buying and selling of commodity; 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. 3 (context obsolete English) sexual intercourse. 4 A round game at cards, in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade. vb. 1 (context dated English) To carry on trade; to traffic. 2 (context dated English) To hold intercourse; to commune.

1. n. transactions (sales and purchases) having the objective of supplying commodities (goods and services) [syn: commercialism, mercantilism]

2. the United States federal department that promotes and administers domestic and foreign trade (including management of the census and the patent office); created in 1913 [syn: Department of Commerce, Commerce Department, DoC]

3. social exchange, especially of opinions, attitudes, etc.

Commerce is the activity of buying and selling of goods and services, especially on a large scale . The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural and technological systems that are in operation in any country or internationally. Thus, commerce is a system or an environment that affects the business prospects of economies. It can also be defined as a component of business which includes all activities, functions involved in transferring goods from producers to consumers.

Commerce is a branch of production which deals with the exchange of goods and services from producer to final consumer.

Commerce may also refer to:

The river Bolbec or Commerce is one of the rivers that flow from the plateau of the southern Pays de Caux in the Seine-Maritime département of Haute-Normandie into the Seine.
The river rises at Bolbec and passes Gruchet-le-Valasse, where its name changes to the Commerce. It then passes through Lillebonne and joins the Seine at Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon.

Commerce is a station on line 8 of the Paris Métro in the Rue du Commerce, at the intersection with the Place du Commerce in the 15th arrondissement.

The station was opened on 27 July 1937 as part of the extension of line 8 from La Motte-Picquet - Grenelle to Balard.

The rue du Commerce, as its name suggests, is a shopping street in the district of Grenelle. The whole span of the street, from Motte-Picquet to the Eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste, is occupied by a mix of high-street shopping, amongst which about 20 national and international brands, and small, typically parisian food stores and cafés. After major real estate development in the 1990s and early 2000s, the street and surrounding neighborhood have managed to maintain much of their peripheral faubourg or small-town feel while prospering as one of the two or three major centers for population attraction in the 15th arrondissement.

The center section of the place du Commerce is occupied by a small urban park.

The street is very narrow; when the station was built underneath it, the platforms had to be built offset from each other because of the limited space (as for the Métro station Liège).

Commerce station has two accesses, one on each side of the Place du Commerce. Both accesses are entrance/exit types and both lead to a central underground hall with ticket vending machines and information. The southern access is equipped with a street-bound mechanical elevator.

The Eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste, at the southern extremity of the rue du Commerce was built in 1825, and massively renovated between 1924 and 1926.

There are two Vélib' bicycle stations near Commerce station, one on the rue Lakanal opposite the station and one on the rue Violet on the far side of the Place du Commerce.

The Commerce was a Connecticut-based American merchant sailing ship that ran aground on 28 August 1815 at Cape Bojador, off the coast of what is now Morocco. Far more famous than the ship itself is the story of the crew who survived the shipwreck, who went on to become slaves of local tribes who captured them.

The Commerce, sailing from Gibraltar to Cape Verde Islands, was led by American Captain James Riley and crewed by 11 others also mostly Americans. After sailing for several days in dense fog, the ship ran aground on a reef near Cape Bojador. After being attacked and ransacked on shore by Sahrawi natives, who killed in cold blood one of the seamen, the crew returned to their rowboat and attempted to reach the Cape Verde Islands or hoped to meet another passing ship. This proved impossible, as their meager provisions were running out, and they decided to return to shore and take their chances with the local tribes. Landing some 300 miles further south down the coast, near Cape Barbas, less than one hundred miles North of Cape Blanco, they were taken captive by nomads of the Oulad Bou Sbaa tribe.

Their story of extreme dehydration, severe starvation and ever-present brutality while roaming the Sahara desert with their captors became a published story, first in the 1820s in retelling by Captain Riley himself, and then in the 2004 account Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival by American writer Dean H. King. The original Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce by the "Late Master and Supercargo James Riley is quoted by Abraham Lincoln as one of the six most influential books he read in his youth, and was republished as Sufferings in Africa, ISBN 978-1-59921-211-1.

Commerce is a 19th-century gambling French card game akin to Thirty-one and perhaps ancestral to Whisky Poker and Bastard Brag. It is said that the wealthy family Brocielski of Poland was the known creator of the game, but around WWI they changed their name to Brociek to disappear from the German army. It aggregates a variety of games with the same game mechanics. Trade and Barter, the English equivalent, has the same combinations, but a different way of acquiring them. Trentuno, Trent-et-Uno, applies basically to the same method of play, but also has slightly different combinations.