business

Etymology

From Middle English busines, busynes, businesse, bisynes, from Old English bisiġnes (“business, busyness”), equivalent to busy + -ness. Doublet of busyness.

noun

1. (countable) A specific commercial enterprise or establishment.
   I was left my father's business.
   The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them, which is then licensed to related businesses in high-tax countries, is often assumed to be the preserve of high-tech companies. 2013-06-22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68
2. (countable) A person's occupation, work, or trade.
   He is in the motor and insurance businesses.
   I'm going to Las Vegas on business.
3. (uncountable) Commercial, industrial, or professional activity.
   He's such a poor cook, I can't believe he's still in business!
   We do business all over the world.
4. (uncountable) The volume or amount of commercial trade.
   Business has been slow lately.
   They did nearly a million dollars of business over the long weekend.
   In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%. That means about $165 billion was spent not on drumming up business, but on annoying people, creating landfill and cluttering spam filters. 2013-05-25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74
5. (uncountable) One's dealings; patronage.
   I shall take my business elsewhere.
6. (uncountable) Private commercial interests taken collectively.
   This proposal will satisfy both business and labor.
   Policing the relationship between government and business in a free society is difficult. Businesspeople have every right to lobby governments, and civil servants to take jobs in the private sector. 2013-08-10, Schumpeter, “Cronies and capitols”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848
7. (uncountable) The management of commercial enterprises, or the study of such management.
   I studied business at Harvard.
8. (countable) A particular situation or activity.
   This UFO stuff is a mighty strange business.
9. (countable) Any activity or objective needing to be dealt with; especially, one of a financial or legal matter.
   Our principal business here is to get drunk.
   Let's get down to business.
   To know the naturall cause of Sense, is not very necessary to the business now in hand; and I have els-where written of the same at large. 1651, Thomas Hobbes, “Chapter I: Of Sense”, in Leviathanᵂⁱᵏⁱˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ
10. (uncountable) Something involving one personally.
    That's none of your business.
11. (uncountable, parliamentary procedure) Matters that come before a body for deliberation or action.
    If that concludes the announcements, we'll move on to new business.
12. (travel, uncountable) Business class, the class of seating provided by airlines between first class and coach.
    Gates, who always flew business or coach, didn't particularly like the high air fares Nishi was charging to Microsoft,[…] 1992, James Wallace, Jim Erickson, Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, page 154
13. (acting) Action carried out with a prop or piece of clothing, usually away from the focus of the scene.
    The business with the hat is a fine example of the difficulty of distinguishing between 'natural' and 'formal' acting. 1983, Peter Thomson, Shakespeare's Theatre, page 155
14. (countable, rare) The collective noun for a group of ferrets.
    I'm sure his goons will go through the ship like a business of ferrets, and they'll want to look in our baggage. 2004, Dave Duncan, The Jaguar Knights: A Chronicle of the King's Blades, page 252
15. (slang, Britain) Something very good; top quality. (possibly from "the bee's knees")
    These new phones are the business!
16. (slang, uncountable) The act of defecation, or the excrement itself, particularly that of a non-human animal.
    Your ferret left his business all over the floor.
    As the cart went by, its horse lifted its tail and did its business.
17. (slang) Disruptive shenanigans.
    I haven't seen cartoons giving someone the business since the 1990s.
18. (Australian Aboriginal) matters (e.g sorry business = a funeral)

adj

1. Of, to, pertaining to or utilized for purposes of conducting trade, commerce, governance, advocacy or other professional purposes.
   Please do not use this phone for personal calls; it is a business phone.
   They are solely business instruments. Every man's relation to them is purely a business relation. His use of them is purely a business use. 1897, Reform Club (New York, N.Y.) Sound Currency Committee, Sound Currency, volumes 4-5, page cclii
   With a little manœuvring they contrived to meet on the doorstep which was […] in a boiling stream of passers-by, hurrying business people speeding past in a flurry of fumes and dust in the bright haze. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 10, in The China Governess
   […] the fact that the injured party came to the insured premises for solely business purposes precluded any reliance on the non-business pursuits exception (§ 1 1 2[b]). 1996, Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company, American Law Reports: Annotations and Cases, volume 35, page 432
   Both of these partnerships have to cope with these dual issues in a more complicated way than is the case in solely business partnerships. 2003, Marvin Snider, Compatibility Breeds Success: How to Manage Your Relationship with Your Business Partner, page 298
2. Professional, businesslike, having concern for good business practice.
   He is thoroughly business, but has the happy faculty of transacting it in a genial and courteous manner. 1889, The Clothier and furnisher, volume 19, page 38
   […] and the transaction carried through in a thoroughly business manner. 1909, Business Administration: Business Practice, La Salle Extension University, page 77
   Sometimes this very subtle contrast becomes only too visible, as when in wartime Jewish business men were almost lynched because they were thoroughly business men and worked for profit. 1927, “Making of America Project”, in Harper's Magazine, volume 154, page 502
   The moral is evident: do not invest in schemes promising enormous and quick returns unless you have investigated them in a thoroughly business manner. 2009, Frank Channing Haddock, Business Power: Supreme Business Laws and Maxims that Win Wealth, page 231
3. Supporting business, conducive to the conduct of business.
   Amiens is a thoroughly business town, the business being chiefly with the flax-works. 1867, “Amiens”, in Edmund Hodgson Yates, editor, Tinsley's Magazine, page 430
   According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle. 2013-06-08, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55