Other forms: businesses
Business is the activity of making, buying and selling to earn money. Go into business, do business with, business is slow.
As a countable noun a business is a company: run a small business, sell the business. It also means what properly concerns somebody: none of your business, mind your own business — which is one of the sharpest things you can say in English. And it means a matter generally: this whole business, a bad business. Note business as usual, business class, and businesslike, meaning efficient and unsentimental.
1nounbusinessThe activity of making, buying and selling for money.~56%
“Business was slow all through the winter.”
2nouncompanyA company.~42%
“They ran the business from a shed for four years.”
3nounmatterA matter that concerns somebody.~2%
“The whole business took three years to resolve.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
business is trade or a concern.
Old English bisignes meant anxiety or busyness, built from busy plus -ness. The commercial sense arrived in the fifteenth century, and the older meaning survives in a nasty business, which is about trouble rather than trade.
Middle English
bisynes
English, today
business
From Middle English bisynes. From Middle English busines, busynes, businesse, bisynes, from Old English bisiġnes (“business, busyness”), equivalent to busy + ness. a doublet of busyness. Sense 17 (something very good, top quality), possibly derives from "the bee's knees"
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA