mercantile agency

American

noun

commercial agency.

mercantile agency British

noun

an enterprise that collects and supplies information about the financial credit standing of individuals and enterprises

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of mercantile agency

First recorded in 1855–60

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

mercantile agency

Instead of a restrictive tendency a mercantile agency promotes the expansion of credit and yet permits of proper conservatism.

From Up To Date Business Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) by Seymour Eaton

Just then a clerk came in and handed him a slip of paper, which I recognized as a special report from the mercantile agency.

From A Man of Samples Something about the men he met "On the Road" by William H. Maher

His landlady had got the news promptly from a boarder who paid in part by acting as a sort of mercantile agency for her in watching her very uncertain boarders.

From The Fortune Hunter by David Graham Phillips

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023