noun
definition
A person who traffics in commodities for profit.
synonyms
definition
The owner or operator of a retail business.
definition
A trading vessel; a merchantman.
definition
A supercargo.
Examples of merchants in a Sentence
The merchants were not fighting men.
There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and left us to perish.
All access to the gorge was free, funded by the generosity of private contributors, merchants and the equipment manufactures.
The Code recognizes complete private ownership in land, but apparently extends the right to hold land to votaries, merchants (and resident aliens?).
The political and the commercial proposals were alike received with coldness, because the native diplomatists had aims which could not be reconciled completely with the policy of any other country, and the native merchants were afraid of foreign competition.
Harwich has always had a considerable trade; in the 14th century merchants came even from Spain, and there was much trade in wheat and wool with Flanders.
There was no attempt to overwhelm whole empires by pouring into them masses of troops, but commerce was combined with territorial acquisition, and a continuity of European interest secured by the presence of merchants and settlers.
The family of Riquet, or Riqueti, originally of the little town of Digne, won wealth as merchants at Marseilles, and in 1570 Jean Riqueti bought the château and seigniory of Mirabeau, which had belonged to the great Provencal family of Barras.
In the r3th century Pisan merchants founded there a colony, Portus Pisanus, which, however, soon disappeared during the migrations of the Mongols and Turks.
Scandinavian merchants brought the products of India to England and Ireland.
Since the days of Adolf of Holstein and Henry the Lion, a movement of German colonization, in which farmers from the Low Countries, merchants from Lubeck, and monks of the Cistercian Order all played their parts, had been spreading German influence from the Oder to the Vistula, from the Vistula to the Dwina - to Prague, to Gnesen, and even to Novgorod the Great.
He was the youngest son of Michel Etienne Turgot, "provost of the merchants" of Paris, and Madeleine Frangoise Martineau, and came of an old Norman family.
Commercial supremacy required not so much highly trained intelligence amongst manufacturers and merchants as keen business instinct and a certain rude energy.
Shortly before starting for the Russian expedition Napoleon vainly tried to reassure the merchants and financiers of France then face to face with a sharp financial crisis.
The trade is said to have been increased by the arrival of certain merchants driven from the Netherlands by the persecution of the duke of Alva.
The material, brick and terra-cotta, is the determining cause of the characteristics of north Italian Gothic 1 This palace was originally the property of the Pesaro family, and afterwards of the duke of Este, and finally of the republic, which used it as a dwelling-place for royal guests before letting it to Turkish merchants.
The trade was enormously profitable, not only to the merchants but to the town, which levied a rigorous duty on all exports and imports; at the same time formidable risks had to be faced both from the desert-tribes and from the Parthians, and successfully to plan or convoy a great caravan came to be looked upon as a distinguished service to the state, often recognized by public monuments erected by " council and people " or by the merchants interested in the venture.
In 1770 most of the merchants agreed not to import goods from England and transferred their trade with New York City, where Loyalist influence was strong, to Boston and Philadelphia.
Spinning members preponderate, but almost all the Manchester cotton merchants and cotton brokers have also joined the association.
The Templars were founded about the year 1118 by a Burgundian knight, Hugh de Paganis; the Hospitallers sprang from a foundation in Jerusalem erected by merchants of Amalfi before the First Crusade, and were reorganized under Gerard le Puy, master until 1120.
Juries are mentioned, sometimes of the county and sometimes of the county and merchants.
It was Orduin who first abolished the onerous system of tolls on exports and imports, and established a combination of native merchants for promoting direct commercial relations between Sweden and Russia.
Before this time Columbus had proposed an exchange of his Carib prisoners as slaves against live stock to be furnished to Haiti by Spanish merchants.
The Senate, which exercises the greater part of the executive power, is composed of eighteen members, one half of whom must have studied law or finance, while at least seven of the remainder must belong to the class of merchants.
Owing to its healthy and convenient situation, Broughty Ferry has become a favourite residence of Dundee merchants.
Not to be coerced in this manner, the Rand merchants proceeded to bring their goods on from the Vaal by wagon.
A league was formed binding merchants not to deal in goods of British origin; patriotic associations were established for the purpose of defending Venezuela against British aggression, and the militia were embodied.
Lombard Street similarly points to the residence of Lombard merchants, the name existing when Edward II.
In the 7th century the city seems to have settled down into a prosperous place and to have been peopled by merchants of many nationalities.
Crowds of merchants with their hats on transacted business in the aisles, and used the font as a counter upon which to make their payments; lawyers received clients at their several pillars; and masterless serving-men waited to be engaged upon their own particular bench.
The first great emigration of the London merchants westward was about the middle of the 18th century, but only those who had already secured large fortunes ventured so far as Hatton Garden.
The gross receipts from this export trade amounted in the year1908-1909to £T99,564, and the profits approximately to £T12,000, in spite of the contest between Liverpool and Spanish salt merchants on the Calcutta market, which led to a heavy cutting of prices.
There are said to be about thirty khans or caravanserais in Bagdad for the reception of pilgrims and merchants and their goods, none of which is of any importance as a building, with the single exception of the khan el-Aurtmeh adjoining the Marjanieh mosque, to which it formerly belonged.
Besides the court of superior officers, which assists the pasha in the general administration of the province, there is also a mejlis or mixed tribunal for the settlement of municipal and commercial affairs, to which both Christian and Jewish merchants are admitted.
The father was secretary in one of the numerous factories erected on the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean by the warlike and enterprising merchants of Pisa.
In the middle ages Romford was rather a meetingplace for merchants than an industrial centre.
In 1679 Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut (Duluth), as agent for a company of Canadian merchants which sought to establish trading posts on the Lakes, explored the country from the head of Lake Superior to Mille Lacs and planted the arms of Louis XIV.
During the business hours (1-3 p.m.) the exchange is crowded by some 5000 merchants and brokers.
The wealth of the town was increased in 1 189 by the destruction of the flourishing trading centre of Bardowieck by Henry the Lion; from this time it began to be much frequented by Flemish merchants.
The exclusion of the handicraftsmen from the Rath led, early in the 15th century, to a rising of the craft gilds against the patrician merchants, and in 1410 they forced the latter to recognize the authority of a committee of 48 burghers, which concluded with the senate the so-called First Recess; there were, however, fresh outbursts in 1458 and 1483, which were settled by further compromises.
On the other hand the severe measures taken by the government prevented the growth of anything like legalized slavery on Siberian soil; but the people, ruined as they were both by the intrusion of agricultural colonists and by the exactions of government officials, fell into what was practically a kind of slavery to the merchants.
Yakutsk is thoroughly Yakutic; marriages of Russians with Yakut wives are common, and in the middle of the 19th century the Yakut language was predominant among the Russian merchants and officials.
Agriculturists, tanners, merchants and mollahs (priests) were called from Turkestan, and small principalities sprang up on the Irtysh and the Ob.
The first charter was that granted by the prior and convent in 1252, by which Weymouth was made a free borough and port for all merchants, the burgesses holding their burgages by the same customs as those of Portsmouth and Southampton.
His object was to found a great empire; but this was a project at variance with the wishes of his employers - an association of merchants, who were dissatisfied because the wealth which they expected to see flowing into their coffers was expended in promoting the permanent interests of a distant country.
Even earlier than Heriot's hospital was the Merchant Maiden hospital, dating from 1605, which gave to the daughters of merchants similar advantages to those which Heriot's secured for burgesses' sons.
In 1738 George Watson's hospital for boys was founded; then followed the Trades' Maiden hospital for burgesses' daughters, John Watson's, Daniel Stewart's, the Orphans', Gillespie's,' Donaldson's 2 hospitals, and other institutions founded by successful merchants of the city, in which poor children of various classes were lodged, boarded and educated.
In 1823 Francis George Farewell, formerly a lieutenant in the British navy, with other merchants of Cape Town, formed a company to trade with the natives of the southeast coast.
It was in this year that a petition from Cape Town merchants asking for the creation of a British colony at Natal was met by the statement that the Cape finances would not permit the establishment of a new dependency.
The merchants, however, despatched an expedition under Dr Andrew Smith to inquire into the possibilities of the country, and the favourable nature of his report induced a party of Dutch farmers under Piet Uys to go thither also.