trade

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The activity of buying and selling goods and services.

   Venice was once an important centre of trade with the East.

2. 2
   noun

   A job that needs special skills, especially with your hands.

   He learned his trade as a carpenter through an apprenticeship.

3. 3
   verb

   To buy and sell goods, or to exchange one thing for another.

   The two countries have traded with each other for centuries.

4. 4
   verb

   To give something in exchange for something else.

   He traded his old phone for a newer model.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Trade came from a German source related to the Old English word tread. It first meant “a track or way,” then “a way of life” and, by the early 16th century, “a skilled handicraft.” The sense of buying and selling developed in the mid-16th century.

From Middle English trade (“path, course of conduct”), introduced into English by Hanseatic merchants, from Middle Low German trade (“track, course”), from Old Saxon trada (“spoor, track”), from Proto-West Germanic *tradu, from Proto-Germanic *tradō (“track, way”), and cognate with Old English tredan (“to tread”); ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dreh₂- (“to tread, walk, step, run”). Cognate with Dutch trade, tra (“path, trail, course, trade”), German Low German Traad (“track, wagon trail”), Luxembourgish Tratt (“step, pace”), Icelandic tröð (“a lane between fences, enclosure, pen”).

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary