merchant

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun One whose occupation is the wholesale purchase and retail sale of goods for profit.
• noun One who runs a retail business; a shopkeeper.
• adjective Of or relating to merchants, merchandise, or commercial trade.
• adjective Of or relating to the merchant marine.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To trade; buy or sell; deal; barter; traffic; negotiate.
• noun One who is engaged in the business of buying commercial commodities and selling them again for the sake of profit; especially, one who buys and sells in quantity or by wholesale.
• noun A supercargo; the person in charge of the business affairs of a trading expedition.
• noun A merchant ship or vessel; a merchantman.
• noun A shop-keeper or store-keeper.
• noun 5. A fellow; a chap.
• Relating to trade or commerce; commercial: as, the law merchant. See law.
• Pertaining to merchants; belonging to the mercantile class; engaged or used in trade or commerce.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• intransitive verb obsolete To be a merchant; to trade.
• adjective Of, pertaining to, or employed in, trade or merchandise.
• adjective the mercantile marine of a country.
• adjective a ship employed in commerce.
• adjective a tailor who keeps and sells materials for the garments which he makes.
• noun One who traffics on a large scale, especially with foreign countries; a trafficker; a trader.
• noun obsolete A trading vessel; a merchantman.
• noun U. S. & Scot. One who keeps a store or shop for the sale of goods; a shopkeeper.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A person who traffics in commodities for profit.
• noun The owner or operator of a retail business.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a businessperson engaged in retail trade