different between commerce vs affinity

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French commerce, from Latin commercium.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?k?m.?s/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?k?m.?s/, (dated) /k??m??s/

Noun

commerce (countable and uncountable, plural commerces)

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.
   • 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.
   • 1648, Walter Montagu Miscellanea Spiritualia, or Devout Essaies

     these perillous commerces of our love

4. An 18th-century French card game in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade.

Synonyms

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

Derived terms

• chamber of commerce
• commercial

Translations

Verb

commerce (third-person singular simple present commerces, present participle commercing, simple 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

   • 1844, John Wilson, Essay on the Genius, and Character of Burns

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

Further reading

• commerce in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• commerce in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

French

Etymology

From Middle French commerce, borrowed from Latin commercium (“commerce, trade”), from com- (“together”) + merx (“good, wares, merchandise”); see merchant, mercenary.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?.m??s/

Noun

commerce m (plural commerces)

1. commerce, trade
2. store, shop, trader

Derived terms

• commercial

See also

• négoce

Further reading

• “commerce” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Louisiana Creole French

Etymology

From French commerce (“commerce”).

Noun

commerce

1. business, commerce

References

• Alcée Fortier, Louisiana Folktales

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??f?n?ti/

Etymology

From Old French affinité.

Noun

affinity (countable and uncountable, plural affinities)

1. A natural attraction or feeling of kinship to a person or thing.
2. A family relationship through marriage of a relative (e.g. sister-in-law), as opposed to consanguinity (e.g. sister).
3. A kinsman or kinswoman of a such relationship; one who is affinal.
4. The fact of and manner in which something is related to another.
   • 1997, Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, page 67, The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ?ISBN:

     A “signature” was placed on all things by God to indicate their affinities — but it was hidden, hence the search for arcane knowledge. Knowing was guessing and interpreting, not observing or demonstrating.

5. Any romantic relationship.
6. Any passionate love for something.
7. (taxonomy) resemblances between biological populations; resemblances that suggest that they are of a common origin, type or stock.
8. (geology) structural resemblances between minerals; resemblances that suggest that they are of a common origin or type.
9. (chemistry) An attractive force between atoms, or groups of atoms, that contributes towards their forming bonds
10. (medicine) The attraction between an antibody and an antigen
11. (computing) tendency to keep a task running on the same processor in a symmetric multiprocessing operating system to reduce the frequency of cache misses
12. (geometry) An automorphism of affine space.

Hyponyms

• microaffinity

Derived terms

Translations