Word.ws English Dictionary

by trade

by trade prepositional phrase: as a profession; professionally.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic, postpositional) As a profession; professionally.
    • Although he was a gifted musician, he was a plumber by trade and never played music professionally.

Questions about by trade

What does by trade mean?
By trade means as a profession; professionally.
What part of speech is by trade?
By trade is a prepositional phrase.

Words near by trade in the dictionary

  1. by the way
  2. by the way of
  3. by their fruits you will know them
  4. by thunder
  5. by Toutatis
  6. by trade
  7. by turns
  8. by vice of
  9. by virtue of
  10. by way of
  11. by way of example

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by trade (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-by trade.ogg.

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