Mercantile means to do with trade and merchants. Mercantile law, a mercantile family, the mercantile marine.
The mercantile marine is the older name for the merchant navy. In economic history, mercantilism was the doctrine that a country grows rich by exporting more than it imports and hoarding the difference in gold.
1adjectivemercantileTo do with trade and merchants.
“Venice grew rich as a mercantile city, trading spices and silk across the Mediterranean.”
mercantile is a quality.
It is the merchant's own word. Mercantile means anything to do with a merchant and the buying and selling he lives by.
hooks ontomerchant
Italian mercantile comes from mercante, a merchant, from Latin mercari, to trade.
French
mercantile
English, today
mercantile
Built from
Borrowed from French mercantile. Borrowed from French mercantile, from Italian mercantile, from mercante (“merchant”), from Latin mercāns (“trading”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA