• (GA) IPA: /ˈkɑm.ɚs/
• (RP) IPA: /ˈkɒm.əs/, /kɒˈmɜːs/

commerce

1. (business) The exchange or buying and selling of commodities; especially the exchange of merchandise, on a large scale, between different places or communities; extended trade or traffic.
2. Social intercourse; the dealings of one person or class in society with another; familiarity.
   • 1911, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Bunyan,_John Bunyan, John]”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

     Fifteen years of thought, observation, and commerce with the world had made him [Bunyan] wiser.

   • 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque:

     Suppose we held our converse not in words, but in music; those who have a bad ear would find themselves cut off from all near commerce, and no better than foreigners in this big world.

3. (obsolete) Sexual intercourse.
4. An 18th-century French card game in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade.

• trade, traffic, dealings, intercourse, interchange, communion, communication
• See also Thesaurus:copulation

• French: commerce
• German: Handel, Kommerz
• Italian: commercio
• Portuguese: comércio
• Russian: торго́вля
• Spanish: comercio

• Russian: обще́ние

• French: rapports
• Russian: сноше́ние

commerce (commerces, present participle commercing; past and past participle commerced)

1. (intransitive, archaic) To carry on trade; to traffic.
   • 1599, Ben Jonson, Every Man out of His Humour

     Beware you commerce not with bankrupts.

2. (intransitive, archaic) To hold intercourse; to commune.
   • ?, Alfred Tennyson, Walking to the Mail

     commercing with himself

   • Musicians […] taught the people in angelic harmonies to commerce with heaven.