business
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-West Germanic *bisīg
Old English bisiġ
Proto-Germanic *-in-
Proto-Indo-European *-h₂
Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂
Proto-Indo-European *-yéti
Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti
Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ti
Proto-Germanic *-ōną
Proto-Germanic *-inōną
Proto-Indo-European *-dyé-
Proto-Germanic *-atjaną
Proto-Indo-European *-tus
Proto-Germanic *-þuz
Proto-Germanic *-assuz
Proto-Germanic *-inassuz
Proto-West Germanic *-nassī
Old English -nes
Old English bisiġnes
Middle English bisynes
English business
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"
Base: busy
Affixes: -ness
Inflected forms:
form: biz
pos: adj
tags: alternative
clipping
form: bisoness
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: businesse
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: busynesse
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: bizness
pos: adj
tags: alternative
African-American-Vernacular-English
pronunciation-spelling
form: bidness
pos: adj
tags: alternative
African-American-Vernacular-English
Southern
pronunciation-spelling
Senses:
gloss: Of, to, pertaining to, or used for purposes of conducting trade, commerce, governance, advocacy or other professional purposes.
pos: adj
examples: Please do not use this phone for personal calls; it is a business phone.
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.
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.
[…] 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]).
Both of these partnerships have to cope with these dual issues in a more complicated way than is the case in solely business partnerships.
gloss: Professional, businesslike, having concern for good business practice.
pos: adj
examples: He is thoroughly business, but has the happy faculty of transacting it in a genial and courteous manner.
[…] and the transaction carried through in a thoroughly business manner.
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.
The moral is evident: do not invest in schemes promising enormous and quick returns unless you have investigated them in a thoroughly business manner.
gloss: Supporting business, conducive to the conduct of business.
pos: adj
examples: Amiens is a thoroughly business town, the business being chiefly with the flax-works.
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.
Translations: