business
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈbɪz.nɪs/
ipa: /ˈbɪz.nɪz/
ipa: /ˈbɪz.nəs/
note: weak vowel merger
ipa: /ˈbɪz.nəz/
ipa: /ˈbɪz.nɪs/
ipa: /ˈbɪd.nɪs/
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈbɪz(ɪ~i)nɛs/
homophone: busyness (for some speakers)
rhymes: -ɪznɪs
rhymes: -ɪznɪz
rhymes: -ɪznəs
rhymes: -ɪznəz
rhymes: -ɪdnəs
rhymes: -ɪdnəz
Forms: form: biz
form: bisoness
form: businesse
form: busynesse
form: bizness
form: bidness
Etymology: From Middle English busines, busynes, businesse, bisynes, from Old English bisiġnes (“business, busyness”), equivalent to busy + -ness. Doublet of busyness. Sense 17 (something very good, top quality), possibly derives from "the bee's knees"
Senses: examples: text: Please do not use this phone for personal calls; it is a business phone.
text: They are solely business instruments. Every man's relation to them is purely a business relation. His use of them is purely a business use.
ref: 1897, Reform Club (New York, N.Y.) Sound Currency Committee, Sound Currency, volumes 4-5, page cclii:
text: With a little manœuvring they contrived to meet on the doorstep which was […] in a boiling stream of passers-by, hurrying business people speeding past in a flurry of fumes and dust in the bright haze.
ref: 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 10, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
text: […] the fact that the injured party came to the insured premises for solely business purposes precluded any reliance on the non-business pursuits exception (§ 1 1 2[b]).
ref: 1996, Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company, American Law Reports: Annotations and Cases, volume 35, page 432:
text: Both of these partnerships have to cope with these dual issues in a more complicated way than is the case in solely business partnerships.
ref: 2003, Marvin Snider, Compatibility Breeds Success: How to Manage Your Relationship with Your Business Partner, page 298:
glosses: Of, to, pertaining to, or used for purposes of conducting trade, commerce, governance, advocacy or other professional purposes.
examples: text: He is thoroughly business, but has the happy faculty of transacting it in a genial and courteous manner.
ref: 1889, The Clothier and furnisher, volume 19, page 38:
text: […] and the transaction carried through in a thoroughly business manner.
ref: 1909, Business Administration: Business Practice, La Salle Extension University, page 77:
text: Sometimes this very subtle contrast becomes only too visible, as when in wartime Jewish business men were almost lynched because they were thoroughly business men and worked for profit.
ref: 1927, “Making of America Project”, in Harper's Magazine, volume 154, page 502:
text: The moral is evident: do not invest in schemes promising enormous and quick returns unless you have investigated them in a thoroughly business manner.
ref: 2009, Frank Channing Haddock, Business Power: Supreme Business Laws and Maxims that Win Wealth, page 231:
glosses: Professional, businesslike, having concern for good business practice.
examples: text: Amiens is a thoroughly business town, the business being chiefly with the flax-works.
ref: 1867, “Amiens”, in Edmund Hodgson Yates, editor, Tinsley's Magazine, page 430:
text: According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.
ref: 2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55:
glosses: Supporting business, conducive to the conduct of business.
Related terms: sense: Appendix
word: Animals