[f. TRADE v. + -ING1.] The action of the verb TRADE in various senses; esp. the carrying on of trade; buying and selling; commerce, trade, traffic.
1590. [see b].
1615. in Buccleuch MSS. (Hist. MSS. Comm.), I. 168. Either of us might assist each other in free Trading in those parts.
1645. Milton, Tetrach., Wks. 1851, IV. 220. So to serve the commodity of insatiable trading, usury shall be permitted.
1654. Nicholas Papers (Camden), II. 82. Hee will stopp all tredding by sea that way.
1799. in Picton, L’pool Munic. Rec. (1886), II. 219. To prohibit the trading for slaves.
1885. Athenæum, 5 Sept., 302/1. Successful trading was not at that date quite so important.
b. attrib. and Comb.; in sense ‘of, pertaining to, or connected with trade,’ as trading course, line, origin; ‘intended for trade or barter,’ as trading articles, cloth, goods; ‘frequented for, employed in, made or done for trading,’ as trading center, craft, journey, path, port, post (POST sb.3 2 c), ship, smack, station, tax, vessel, voyage; † trading-house, a building in which barter was carried on in the savage parts of North America; trading-place, † (a) a place of resort or passage; (b) a place frequented for trade.
1904. Archæologia Æliana, XXV. II. 255, note. The ports and *trading-centres of the Mediterranean.
1672. Sir W. Talbot, Discov. J. Lederer, 26. Your best Truck is a sort of course *Trading Cloth, of which a yard and a half makes a Matchcoat.
1676. in I. Mather, K. Philip’s War (1862), 99. That the Indian *Trading-houses … be suppressed.
1775. Adair, Amer. Ind., 395. The ford of the old *trading path, where the enemy now and then passed the river.
1590. Greene, Never too Late, O iv. Flora did checker all her *trading place.
1719. De Foe, Crusoe (1840), II. xii. 251. To put into the first *trading port.
1837. W. Irving, Capt. Bonneville, III. xxxiv. 205. Fort Wallah-Wallah is a *trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
1809. R. Langford, Introd. Trade, 111. The voyage may be … to several ports, which is called a *trading voyage.
