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Hanse

Pronunciation: /hæns/

The English word “Hanse” has 4 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A merchant guild, particularly the Fellowship of London Merchants (the "Old Hanse") given a monopoly on London's foreign trade by the Normans or its successor, the Company of Merchant Adventurers (the "New Hanse"), incorporated in 1497 and chartered under Henry VII and Elizabeth I.
  2. The rights and privileges of such guilds, particularly their trade monopolies.
  3. A commercial association of Scottish free burghs in the Middle Ages.
  4. The Hanseatic League: a commercial association of German towns in the Middle Ages.

Etymology

From Middle English hanse, from Old French hanse (“guild; guild fee”), from Medieval Latin hansa, from Old High German hansa, from Proto-West Germanic *hansu, from Proto-Germanic *hansō (“gathering; coalition; gang of men”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱómsōd (“union; gathering”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm (“beside, by, with, along”) + *sed- (“to sit”). In reference to the Hanseatic League, via…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.