commercial definition

English commercial definition

Etymology

commerce +‎ -ial. From French commercial (“of, or pertaining to commerce”), from Late Latin commercialis, from Latin commercium.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kəˈmɜːʃəl/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /kəˈmɝʃəl/

  • Audio (GA)

    (file)

Noun

commercial (plural commercials)

1. An advertisement in a common media format, usually radio or television.

   She was in a commercial for breakfast cereal.

2. (finance) A commercial trader, as opposed to an individual speculator.
3. (obsolete) A commercial traveller.
   • 1875, George Worsley, Advice to the Young!, page 32:

     I have more than once had to lend a commercial money to pay his fare home; as he had played shell-out and lost the lot.

4. (slang) A male prostitute.
   • 1972, Alfred Eustace Parker, The Berkeley Police Story, page 133:

     Tom said that homosexuals hate “commercials,” male prostitutes, and if the homosexual was drunk and angry, he might have committed murder.

   • 1987, Paul William Mathews, Male Prostitution: Two Monographs, page 39:

     With the commercials there is no intensity of feeling and no later animosity; there is emotional and sexual fakery, but no prolonged post-sexual bargaining. […] Paradoxically these boys dissociate themselves from the commercials, yet engage in prostitution only when they require the money.

Hypernyms

• advertisement

Hyponyms

• infomercial

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

commercial (comparative more commercial, superlative most commercial)

1. Of or pertaining to commerce.
   • 1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC:

     A two minutes' walk brought Warwick--the name he had registered under, and as we shall call him--to the market-house, the central feature of Patesville, from both the commercial and the picturesque points of view.

2. (aviation) Designating an airport that serves passenger and/or cargo flights.
3. (aviation) Designating such an airplane flight.

Derived terms

Translations

Related terms

• commerce
• commercialize
• precommercial

Further reading

• “commercial”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “commercial”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

French commercial definition

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin commerciālis, from Latin commercium. By surface analysis, commerce +‎ -ial.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɔ.mɛʁ.sjal/

• audio

  (file)

• Homophones: commerciale, commerciales

Adjective

commercial (feminine commerciale, masculine plural commerciaux, feminine plural commerciales)

1. commercial

Derived terms

Noun

commercial m (plural commerciaux)

1. a salesman, sales representative

Further reading

• “commercial”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Portuguese commercial definition

Noun

commercial m (plural commerciaes or commerciais)

1. Obsolete spelling of comercial

Adjective

commercial m or f (plural commerciaes or commerciais)

1. Obsolete spelling of comercial