Mercatus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A marketplace or bazaar where goods and services are bought and sold; a system or network that facilitates trade and exchange in an economy; a concept referring to commercial activity in general
2. An area designated for commercial transactions and trading of commodities; the overall framework through which buying and selling occur; a term used to describe economic markets collectively
3. A venue where merchants and consumers engage in transactions; the organized environment that enables the distribution of products; a term signifying the economic structure for exchange and commerce

Etymology: "Mercatus" is the Latin past participle of "mercari," meaning "to trade" or "to buy and sell," and it is built on "merx" ("merchandise, goods"). The noun "mercatus" itself meant "trade" or "a market," as in the activity of trading and the place where it happened, and the Romans also used it for a regular market day or fair. Its Indo-European lineage runs through the same root as "merchant" and "commerce," which entered English through French and Latin respectively. The word is far from a common English term. It survives mainly as a Latin loanword in modern scholarly and political writing, and it is most often seen in the name of the Mercatus Center, a libertarian-leaning research institute at George Mason University founded in 1980 as the Center for the Study of Market Processes. Its name was chosen to signal its focus on markets as the arena where goods and ideas change hands.

Synonyms: market