Marts

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A marketplace or commercial area where goods are bought and sold
2. A specific time or season when trading activities are heightened or emphasized
3. A term referring to retail spaces that facilitate the buying and selling of products

Etymology: The noun "marts" is simply the plural of "mart," a word that has travelled a long road from the Latin for trade. Its ancestor is Late Latin "marcātus," a variant of the classical "mercātus," meaning market, which passed into Old Dutch as "*markat" and then into Middle Dutch as "mart" or "markt." That same root gave modern German and Dutch their word for market, so "mart" is a close relative of the everyday word it sits beside in English. English picked up "mart" in a Scottish form, where it became a word for a place of trade, and the sense of a commercial hub or sales venue has stayed close to the original. Some of the word's meaning comes from the same Dutch root, though a separate Latin source, the name of the god Mars, also gave English a related form, and the two lines of descent are easy to confuse.

Synonyms: markets, stores, shops, bazars, emporiums

Antonyms: INVALID