How did ‘concern’ semantically shift to mean ‘commercial enterprise '?

Creative Forums Creative Writing
1

No, it’s not a “concern” in the sense of “worries”. It’s a concern in the sense of “commercial enterprise, entity”.

PS: From the sense of busyness came the business meaning of “concern” I suppose.

  1. How are these 2 senses of concern related? What semantic notions underlie the popular sense of ‘worries’, with this esoteric sense of ‘commercial enterprise’? I need much more detail than these snippety sentences above.

  2. Please trace all semantic shifts from Latin concernō (“I mix, sift, or mingle together, as in a sieve”) to this sense of English ‘concern’? How, and why, did concernō shift to ‘concern’ meaning “an establishment for the transaction of business”?

I never heard of this ‘obscure meaning where it means “business”’!

"FYI a “concern” is quite old english for an establishment or business of some kind."

  1. But why use “concern” when “business”, “corporation”, or “enterprise” are more intuitive and understandable?
2

Concern is more intuitive, because it is something one is continually concerned with. This is why the full term is going concern. Something you have to stay on top of.

Concern comes from Latin. Con, with, and ci, do.The r is a conjugation. To have to do with. It skips a lot of the abstractions of more formal words, gets to the heart of the mattere.

Thanks.

3

Worry is rather already a derivation. The original connotation of concern is more of the type “what concerns you,” what is your problem. “This doesn’t concern you.”

So it denotes ownership and activity.

4

concern (n.)

1580s, “regard, reference” (a sense now obsolete), from concern (v.). Meaning “that which relates or pertains to one” is from 1670s. Meaning “solicitous regard” is from 1690s. Sense of “an establishment for the transaction of business” is from 1680s.; colloquial sense of “a cumbersome or complicated material object” is from 1824. As nouns in 17c. concernance, concernancy, concernment also were used.

5

I adduced this entry in Etymonline in my post. Why did you repeat it? I need assistance because I need way more details, than this entry that’s too snippy to answer my questions.

6

I couldn’t recognise the quote. What is too “snippy” about it?

Perhaps you have to define what details you are after. You can’t expect us to guess.

7

It can be a bit counter intuitive, but you can think about it like this:

A business is a “going concern” when the business is functioning and operating, because the people running the business have to continually be concerned about making enough money to keep it running and operating.

If a business gets so bad that it has to stop operating, it’s no longer a “going concern” - there are no more concerns about how to make a profit, how to pay employees, etc. All concerns of the business, by that point, have disappeared, or at least are no longer “going” ie indefinite, but instead a dying business’ remaining concerns are finite.

8

By the way, the reason the term is used in the business word and has legal weight is that it is general enough to encompass things that sometimes even business or enterprise or even shop or investment can’t for a given instance.

Say I have a friend who is a businessman with several interests and I give him money now and then to put towards real estate. The times I give him money, is that a business? Not really. An enterprise? All these things require more elements to be constituted. An investment? I mean it’s several sort of investments over time, but not even, because an investment means I buy an instrument. Here I just give it to a friend to decide if and when to buy an instrument. Is it a partnership? I mean we both seek to make money from it but not really. It’s a going concern.