1. One who is a proprietor of stock in the public funds or the funds of a joint-stock company, etc. Also (now U.S.) used more widely to include the meaning of ‘shareholder.’
1753. Scots Mag., March, 116/1. The stockholders in the Silesia loan.
1776–83. Justamond, trans. Raynal’s Hist. Indies, I. 359. The stock-holders will be mistrustful, the shares will be depreciated, and the Company will fall to ruin.
1844. H. H. Wilson, Brit. India, III. 498. The India stockholders would be left without any available means of realising their dividends.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, Wealth, Wks. (Bohn), II. 72. It draws the nobility into the competition as stockholders in the mine, the canal, the railway.
1883. Francis E. Prendergast, in Harper’s Mag., Nov., 943/1. To-dat its stockholders pocket comfortable dividends of seven per cent. on stock which was originally a gift.
1904. Athenæum, 2 July, 8/1. The use of ‘stockholders’ in the sense of shareholders is admissible in a work designed for American readers only.
1912. Times, 19 Oct., 18/5. The Three-and-a-Half per Cent. Debenture stockholders.
2. A member of the Stationers’ Company. ? Obs.
1825. Hansard, Typographia, 276. The trading concerns [of the Stationers’ Company] are managed by a regular committee of nine members; viz. the master, the two wardens, and six other stock-holders, who are annually chosen. Ibid. The livery (stock-holders) are summoned to elect.
3. Austral. An owner of large herds of cattle or flocks of sheep.
1819. W. C. Wentworth, Descr. N. S. Wales, 97. The system which the great stockholders almost invariably pursue.
1824. E. Curr, Acc. Van Diemen’s Land, 83. The most negligent stock-holders now carefully house their wool.
So Stockholding vbl. sb. or ppl. a.
1830. Debates in Congress, 10 May, 927. The great stockholding interest, whose funds are in the various stocks, which, altogether, constitute the national debt.
