Also † stock of trade (obs.). The goods kept on sale by a dealer, shopkeeper or pedlar. Also, a workman’s tools, appliances or apparatus.
[1666. Marvell, Lett., 13 Nov., Wks. 1776, I. 59. Catell, corn, and houshold furniture shall be excepted, and all such stock for trade, as is already tax’d by the land tax.]
1762–71. H. Walpole, Vertue’s Anecd. Paint. (1786), V. 214. He retired to Richmond, and … sold part of his plates and stock in trade by auction.
1775. Pennsylv. Even. Post, 20 June, 258/1. To be sold, The Stock in Trade of the late Evan Morgan, deceased.
1851. Borrow, Lavengro, III. xix. 235–6. She … died, leaving me her cart and stock in trade.
b. transf. and fig. (esp. of mental equipment and resources).
1784. Barry, Lect. Painting, iv. Wks. 1809, I. 481. Men of mean intellects, who, incapable of meddling with the ideal, will operate solely with these mechanical principles, as their entire stock of trade.
1842. De Quincey, Cicero, Wks. VI. 185. Such charges were the standing material, the stock-in-trade of every orator.
1874. Sayce, Compar. Philol. vii. 274. The conception of plurality was not part of the primary stock-in-trade of mankind.
1877. Black, Green Past., i. A whole stock-in-trade of things that a good many girls seem to get on very well without.
1878. Lockyer, Stargazing, 233. The stock-in-trade of the modern astronomer.
1910. Q. Rev., Jan., 162. The manual labourer is himself his own stock-in-trade.
