Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Goods bought and sold in business; commercial wares.
  • intransitive verb To buy and sell (goods).
  • intransitive verb To promote the sale of, as by advertising or display.
  • intransitive verb To buy and sell goods; trade commercially.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In general, any movable object of trade or traffic; that which is passed from hand to hand by purchase and sale: specifically, the objects of commerce; a commercial commodity or commercial commodities in general; the staple of a mercantile business; commodities, goods, or wares bought and sold for gain.
  • noun Purchase and sale; trade; bargain; traffic; dealing, or advantage from dealing.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The objects of commerce; whatever is usually bought or sold in trade, or market, or by merchants; wares; goods; commodities.
  • noun The act or business of trading; trade; traffic.
  • transitive verb To make merchandise of; to buy and sell.
  • intransitive verb To trade; to carry on commerce.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable Commodities offered for sale.
  • noun countable A commodity offered for sale; an article of commerce; a kind of merchandise.
  • verb intransitive, archaic To engage in trade.
  • verb intransitive To engage in in-store promotion of the sale of goods, as by display and arrangement of goods.
  • verb transitive, archaic To engage in the trade of.
  • verb transitive To engage in in-store promotion of the sale of.
  • verb transitive To promote as if for sale.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb engage in the trade of
  • noun commodities offered for sale

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English merchaundise, from Old French marchandise, trade, from marcheant, marchand, merchant; see merchant.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman marchaundise, from marchaunt ("merchant")

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