a. [f. TRADE sb. + -LESS.]

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  1.  Without a trade; unskilled in any trade.

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1729.  Young, Imperium Pelagi., V. xxi. O’er generous Globe, o’er golden Mines Her beggar’d, famish’d, Tradeless Native roves.

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1910.  Blackw. Mag., March, 408/2. The semi-educated and tradeless worker.

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  2.  Without or destitute of trade or commerce.

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1836.  E. Elliott, in Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 12 March 3/6.

        Three days of tradeless England
  Would dig and fill her grave!
God! hast not so to rid us
  Of palace’d fool and knave!

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1840.  Tait’s Mag., VII. 310. The Scotch nobility, in our tradeless days, were not sunk quite so low as the Italian nobility at present.

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1897.  Mary Kingsley, W. Africa, 371. The delta region is tremendously interesting…; but it is tradeless.

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1900.  H. G. Graham, Soc. Life Scotl. in 18th C., VII. i. (1901), 233. Consigned to perpetual poverty in some tradeless village.

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