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MERCHANT
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A businessperson engaged in retail trade
Synonyms:
merchandiser; merchant
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("merchant" is a kind of...):
bourgeois; businessperson (a capitalist who engages in industrial commercial enterprise)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "merchant"):
vintner; wine merchant (someone who sells wine)
merchant-venturer; venturer (a merchant who undertakes a trading venture (especially a venture that sends goods overseas))
bargainer; dealer; monger; trader (someone who purchases and maintains an inventory of goods to be sold)
stationer; stationery seller (a merchant who sells writing materials and office supplies)
market keeper; shopkeeper; storekeeper; tradesman (a merchant who owns or manages a shop)
marketer; seller; trafficker; vender; vendor (someone who promotes or exchanges goods or services for money)
schlockmeister; shlockmeister ((slang) a merchant who deals in shoddy or inferior merchandise)
salt merchant; salter (someone who makes or deals in salt)
rug merchant (a merchant who sells rugs)
retail merchant; retailer (a merchant who sells goods at retail)
poulterer; poultryman (a dealer in poultry and poultry products)
jeweler; jeweller (someone in the business of selling jewelry)
hatmaker; hatter; milliner; modiste (someone who makes and sells hats)
grocer (a retail merchant who sells foodstuffs (and some household supplies))
grain merchant (a merchant who deals in food grains)
clothier; haberdasher (a merchant who sells men's clothing)
butcher; meatman (a retailer of meat)
book seller; bookdealer (a dealer in books; a merchant who sells books)
baker (someone who bakes commercially)
Instance hyponyms:
Charles Henry Harrod; Harrod (English merchant who took over a shop in London that was expanded by his son into a prestigious department store (1800-1885))
Charles Digby Harrod; Harrod (English merchant who expanded his father's shop in London into a prestigious department store (1841-1905))
Context examples:
There I saw the Exchange and the Bank and Lloyd’s Coffee House, with the brown-coated, sharp-faced merchants and the hurrying clerks, the huge horses and the busy draymen.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Early this morning a large dog, a half-bred mastiff belonging to a coal merchant close to Tate Hill Pier, was found dead in the roadway opposite to its master's yard.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
In the English merchant service.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
I also drew up a note, to be given to any white merchant or captain of a steam-boat whom the Indian could find, imploring them to see that ropes were sent to us, since our lives must depend upon it.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I took leave of my wife, and boy and girl, with tears on both sides, and went on board the Adventure, a merchant ship of three hundred tons, bound for Surat, captain John Nicholas, of Liverpool, commander.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Miss Hawkins was the youngest of the two daughters of a Bristol—merchant, of course, he must be called; but, as the whole of the profits of his mercantile life appeared so very moderate, it was not unfair to guess the dignity of his line of trade had been very moderate also.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
By St. Paul! said the knight, our good merchant of Southampton hath not played us false, for methinks I can see our ship down yonder.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Then the merchant told him how all his wealth was gone to the bottom of the sea, and how he had nothing left but that little plot of land.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
"Very likely," I returned; "or perhaps clerk or agent to a wine-merchant."
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
