merchant

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One in the business of purchasing and selling goods with the expectation of earning a profit. Commonly refers to a person who buys goods at a wholesale price level for sale at retail; a retailer or a trader. Under the uniform commercial code (ucc) , the definition of merchant may include some businesses not engaged in retail trade, such as car dealers, producers of remanufactured engines, manufacturers of mobile homes, and, with respect to the leasing of an apartment, landlords. Amerchant is considered knowledgeable of the goods he trades in.

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noun

A person engaged in buying and selling: businessperson, dealer, merchandiser, speculator, trader, tradesman, trafficker. See transactions.

verb

To offer for sale: deal (in), handle, market, merchandise, peddle, retail, sell, trade (in), vend. See transactions.

n

Definition: person who sells goods, owns business
Antonyms: buyer, customer

Kievan Russia supplied raw materials of the forest - furs, honey, wax, and slaves - to the Byzantine Empire. This trade had a primarily military character, as the grand prince and his retinue extorted forest products from Russian and Finnish tribes and transported them through hostile territory via the Dnieper River and the Black Sea. In the self-governing republic of Novgorod, wealthy merchants shared power with the landowning elite. Novgorod exported impressive amounts of furs, fish, and other raw materials with the aid of the German Hansa, which maintained a permanent settlement in Novgorod - the Peterhof - as it did on Wisby Island and in London and Bergen.

Grand Prince Ivan III of Muscovy extinguished Novgorod's autonomy and expelled the Germans. Under the Muscovite autocracy, prominent merchants acted as the tsar's agents in exploiting his monopoly rights over commerce in high-value goods such as vodka and salt. The merchant estate (soslovie) emerged as a separate social stratum in the Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649, with the exclusive right to engage in handicrafts and commerce in cities.

Peter I's campaign to build an industrial complex to supply his army and navy opened up new opportunities for Russian merchants, but his government maintained the merchants' traditional obligations to provide fiscal and administrative services to the state without remuneration. From the early eighteenth century to the end of the imperial period, the merchant estate included not only wholesale and retail traders but also persons whose membership in a merchant guild entitled them to perform other economic functions as well, such as mining, manufacturing, shipping, and banking.

Various liabilities imposed by the state, including a ban on serf ownership by merchants and the abolition of their previous monopoly over trade and industry, kept the merchant estate small and weak during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Elements of a genuine bourgeoisie did not emerge until the early twentieth century.

Ethnic diversity contributed to the lack of unity within the merchant estate. Each major city saw the emergence of a distinctive merchant culture, whether mostly European (German and English) in St. Petersburg; German in the Baltic seaports of Riga and Reval; Polish and Jewish in Warsaw and Kiev; Italian, Greek, and Jewish in Odessa; or Armenian in the Caucasus region, to name a few examples. Moreover, importers in port cities generally favored free trade, while manufacturers in the Central Industrial Region, around Moscow, demanded high import tariffs to protect their factories from European competition. These economic conflicts reinforced hostilities based on ethnic differences. The Moscow merchant elite remained xenophobic and antiliberal until the Revolution of 1905.

The many negative stereotypes of merchants in Russian literature reflected the contemptuous attitudes of the gentry, bureaucracy, intelligentsia, and peasantry toward commercial and industrial activity. The weakness of the Russian middle class constituted an important element in the collapse of the liberal movement and the victory of the Bolshevik party in the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Bibliography

Freeze, Gregory L. (1986). "The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History." American Historical Review 91:11 - 36.

Owen, Thomas C. (1981). Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855-1905. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Owen, Thomas C. (1991). "Impediments to a Bourgeois Consciousness in Russia, 1880 - 1905: The Estate Structure, Ethnic Diversity, and Economic Regionalism." In Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow, and James L. West. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rieber, Alfred J. (1982). Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

—THOMAS C. OWEN

Under the Uniform Commercial Code, “a person who deals in goods of the kind or otherwise by his occupation holds himself out as having knowledge or skill peculiar to the practice or goods involved in the transaction or to whom such knowledge or skill may be attributed by his employment of an agent or broker or other intermediary who by his occupation holds himself out as having such knowledge or skill.” U.C.C. §2-104(1).
A one-time seller who was not engaged in the business of selling goods in question, or holding himself out as a person who deals in such goods, was not a “merchant” for purposes of implied warranty. 473 F. Supp. 35, 38.
Merchants include car dealers, 397 N.Y.S. 2d 677, 681; producers of remanufactured engines, 551 F. Supp.
771, 777; manufacturers of mobile homes, 548 P. 2d 279, 286; and with respect to the leasing of an apartment, a landlord is also considered a merchant, 338 N.Y.S. 2d 67, 69.
A warranty of merchantability will only be implied if the seller is a merchant with respect to goods of the kind in the contract of sale. U.C.C.
§2-314(1).
Under the Uniform Commercial Code, risk of loss passes to the buyer on his receipt of goods only if the seller is a merchant; otherwise, the risk passes to the buyer on tender of delivery.
U.C.C. §2-509(3). See warranty [warranty of merchantability].

A cynical view of the world by Ambrose Bierce

n.

One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.

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IN BRIEF: A person who buys and sells goods for profit.

The craft of the merchant is this; bringing a thing where it abounds to where it is costly. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

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noun
noun, mainly derog

A person with a partiality for the specified activity, practice, attitude, etc. (1914 —) .
Railway Magazine One wonders how many drivers, other than the confirmed speed merchants, will even attempt to run the 8.20 a.m. from Kings Cross from Hitchin to Huntingdon in 24 min (1957) ;
G. Sims Sorry to be such a gloom merchant. But...we're broke, you see (1971).

[From earlier sense, fellow, chap.]

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For a list of words related to merchant, see:

• Employers, Employees, and Business People - merchant: seller of merchandise; retailer; trader

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See words rhyming with "merchant."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Merchant.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - købmand, grosserer
adj. - handels-

idioms:

• merchant bank    (brit.) forretningsbank (beskæftiger sig kun med værdipapirhandel osv.)
• merchant navy    handelsflåde
• merchant ship    handelsskib

Nederlands (Dutch)
handelaar, winkelhouder, liefhebber, specialist, handels-, specialistisch, handelen

Français (French)
n. - (Comm) négociant, marchand, détaillant
adj. - marchand, de la marine marchande

idioms:

• merchant bank    (GB) banque d'affaires
• merchant navy    marine marchande
• merchant ship    navire marchand

Deutsch (German)
n. - Kaufmann, Einzelhändler
adj. - Handels...

idioms:

• merchant bank    Handelsbank
• merchant navy    Handelsmarine
• merchant ship    Handelsschiff

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - χονδρέμπορος, λιανέμπορος, (ναυτ.) εμπορικό πλοίο
v. - εμπορεύομαι

idioms:

• merchant bank    (οικον.) (Βρετ.) τράπεζα επενδύσεων
• merchant navy    εμπορικό ναυτικό
• merchant ship    εμπορικό πλοίο

Italiano (Italian)
grossista

idioms:

• merchant bank    banca commerciale
• merchant navy    marina mercantile
• merchant ship    nave mercantile

Português (Portuguese)
n. - comerciante (m)
v. - comercializar

idioms:

• merchant bank    banco de investimentos (m)
• merchant navy    marinha mercante (f)
• merchant ship    navio mercante (m)

Русский (Russian)
купец, торговый

idioms:

• merchant bank    коммерческий банк
• merchant navy    торговый флот
• merchant ship    коммерческое судно

Español (Spanish)
n. - comerciante, negociante, comerciante al por menor, detallista
adj. - mercante, mercantil, comercial

idioms:

• merchant bank    banco comercial
• merchant navy    marina mercante
• merchant ship    barco mercante

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - köpman, detaljhandlare, karl
v. - handla

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
商人, 店主, 商业的, 商人的

idioms:

• merchant bank    商业银行
• merchant navy    商船
• merchant ship    商船

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 商人, 店主
adj. - 商業的, 商人的

idioms:

• merchant bank    商業銀行
• merchant navy    商船
• merchant ship    商船

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 장사꾼
adj. - 장사꾼의

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 商人, 卸し売り商人
adj. - 商船の, 貿易の, 商業の
v. - 売買する

idioms:

• merchant bank    マーチャントバンク
• merchant navy    商船, 商船員
• merchant ship    商船

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) تاجر (فعل) يتجر ب‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮סוחר‬
adj. - ‮להוט ל-, מכור ל-‬

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