商業
Meaning in Englishcommerce, trade, business
Animated kanji stroke order
Related sentences
Related sentences
There are no published items in this section yet.
Word context
What it means
商業 refers to the organized activity of buying, selling, and exchanging goods and services within a market economy, encompassing trade, commerce, and business operations.
Main meanings
- commerce and trade as an economic activity, especially the buying and selling of goods in a market
- the broader business sector or commercial activities within an economy
- an academic or professional field focused on commerce, business, and trade studies
How to use it
Used in formal writing, economics texts, business law, and policy discourse; commonly appears in compounds like 商業銀行 and 商業都市; in everyday speech, other terms such as 貿易 or 事業 may be used depending on nuance.
Variants and close terms
- 貿易 (boueki) - trade
- 商界 (shōkai) - business world
- 商務 (shōmu) - commercial affairs
- 非商業的 (hi shōgyō-teki) - non-commercial
Composition
- 商: commerce, market activity
- 業: work, industry; combined they denote the realm of commercial activity
Etymology
商 (on'yomi shō) and 業 (on'yomi gyō) combine to form 商業; the Japanese reading is shōgyō, borrowed from the Chinese term shāngyè.
Origin
商業 appeared in Japanese via kanbun and Chinese lexical influence; its modern sense as the organized economic activity solidified during the Edo and Meiji periods with the modernization of commerce and policy.
Word class
Noun (名詞)