[f. as prec. + -ING2.] That trades, in various senses of the verb; esp. engaged in trade, commercial.
1690. Child, Disc. Trade (1698), 2. They have in their greatest councils of state and war, trading-merchants that have lived abroad in most parts of the world.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 20. These rob the trading citizens [bees].
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 69, ¶ 1. Factors in the Trading World are what Ambassadors are in the Politick World.
1790. Burke, Fr. Rev., 263. A great trading or manufacturing town.
1874. Green, Short Hist., vi. § 3. 282. The trading and industrial classes.
Comb. 1727. [Dorrington], Philip Quarll, Pref. Busy Worlds and Trading-Peopled Towns.
† b. That trades in or makes a trade of something (e.g., a public office or position). Obs.
1787. Sir J. Hawkins, Johnson, 214. The duke of Newcastle … gave him [Fielding] a nominal qualification of 100 l. a year, and set him up as a trading-justice, in which disreputable station he died.
1796. Grose’s Dict. Vulg. T. (ed. 3), Trading Justices, Broken mechanics, discharged footmen, and other low fellows, smuggled into the commission of the peace, who subsist by fomenting disputes, granting warrants, and other wise retailing justice.
1812. Examiner, 30 Nov., 767/1. The Court treated the defendant as a systematic and trading libeller.
1839. Ld. Brougham, Statesm. Geo. III., Canning, 289. The common herd of trading politicians.
