Comm. [f. JOINT a. + STOCK.]
1. Stock or capital contributed and owned by a number of persons jointly; capital divided into shares; a common fund.
1615. E. S., Brit. Buss, in Arb., Garner, III. 655. For the good government and sincere disposition of this Joint Stock.
1694. Luttrell, Brief Rel. (1857), III. 400. The merchants of Amsterdam are fitting out with a joint stock 15 privateers of 40 guns each.
1711. Lond. Gaz., No. 4868/3. The Joynt Stock of a Corporation to be erected to carry on a Trade in the South Seas.
1779. F. Hervey, Nav. Hist., II. 200. A kind of open trade was carried on from England to the east, which greatly affected the merchants who traded on the joint stock.
1806. Hutton, Course Math., I. 124. X, Y, and Z made a joint-stock for 12 months.
1883. Wharton’s Law-Lex. (ed. 7), s.v. Joint-Stock Company, The common property of the members, applicable to the purposes of the company, is called its joint-stock, and hence the name.
2. attrib. (joi·nt-stock). Holding a joint stock; formed or conducted on the basis of a joint stock; as joint-stock bank, company, firm.
1808. H. Day (title), A Defence of Joint Stock Companies.
1825. Scott, Fam. Lett. (1894), II. xxi. 278. The people are all mad here about joint-stock companies.
1844. Disraeli, Coningsby, VIII. i. When he received a deputation on sugar duties or joint-stock banks.
1893. Bithell, Counting-ho. Dict., s.v., A Joint Stock Company is defined by Act of Parliament to be ‘A Company consisting of seven or more members having a permanent paid up or nominal capital of fixed amount, divided into shares, also of fixed amount, and formed on the principle of having for its members the holders of shares of such capital, and no other persons.’ This definition excludes companies consisting of six or fewer members, whose affairs fall under the Law of partnership.
Hence Joint-stock v. trans., to turn into joint stock, or into a joint-stock company; Joint-stockery, dealing in, or formation of, joint stocks; Joint-stockism, the system or principle of joint-stocks. (All more or less nonce-wds.)
1894. Sir E. Sullivan, Woman, 99. Only let some clever person invent something better, patent it, *joint-stock it, and get some good names on the direction, and he will have an immense success.
1899. A. J. Wilson, in Contemp. Rev., June, 870. We refine the method of stealing, that is all—joint-stock it, and sometimes call it a dividend.
1864. Realm, 6 April, 3. They are themselves so immersed in *joint-stockery, that they fancy all the rest of mankind are similarly inclined.
1856. Tait’s Mag., XXIII. 304. *Joint-stockism has been successfully applied to many other branches of business.
1890. G. Wallas, in G. B. Shaw, ed. Fab. Ess. in Socialism, 137. The transfigured joint stockism of the present co-operative movement.
