The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mercantile \Mer"can*tile\ (?; 277), a. [F. mercantile, It. mercantile, fr. L. mercans, -antis, p. pr. of mercari to traffic. See Merchant.] 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.
--Arbuthnot.
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.
--McElrath.
Syn: Mercantile, Commercial.
Usage: 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.
Usage examples of "mercantile marine".
A by now thoroughly irritated escort commander forcefully made three points that had forcefully been made to him by the Admiralty: thousands of women and children had been in war zones while being transported as refugees to the United States and Canada: in the current year, as compared to the previous two years, U-boat losses had quadrupled while Mercantile Marine losses had been cut by eighty per cent: and the Russians had requested, or rather insisted, that as many wounded Allied personnel as possible be removed from their overcrowded Archangel hospitals.
There are three distinct but inevitably interlinked elements in this story: the Merchant Navy (officially the Mercantile Marine) and the men who served in it: Liberty Ships: and the units of the German forces, underseas, on the seas and in the air, whose sole mission was to seek out and destroy the vessels and crews of the Merchant Navy.
You're aboard a vessel of the British Mercantile Marine, and such vessels are not run by committees but by the authority of one man only -- the captain.
No more than nine years ago America had gone boldly to war against the greatest maritime power in the world on account of the Royal Navy's attitude towards the American mercantile marine.
Three-quarters of the British mercantile marine rounded Ushant, outward and homeward.