Businessman

How to spell businessman

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce businessman

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does businessman mean?

1. nounA man who works in commerce or runs a company, especially at a senior level.

Businessman in a sentence

• The local businessman donated a large sum to the school fund.

• As a seasoned businessman, he negotiated the contract without a lawyer.

Where does businessman come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound of 'business' and 'man'. The first element traces back to the Old English 'bisignes', built from 'bisig' (meaning busy, occupied, or anxious) plus the abstract noun suffix '-nes', so it originally meant nothing more than the state of being busy. Over the centuries the sense narrowed and hardened from general busyness into 'a commercial occupation' and then 'a commercial enterprise', a shift well underway by the 1700s. The closed compound 'businessman', joining that noun to the native Germanic word 'man', emerged in the early 1800s as commerce became a recognised profession. The spelling trap lives in that join: the silent middle, since 'business' is pronounced 'biz-nis' yet keeps the 'i' from busy and an unstressed 'e' that almost vanishes in speech.

How the word is built

• busy (occupied, engaged)
• -ness (noun-forming suffix marking a state)
• man (adult male person)