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Comment by strstr | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off-topic, but I think you mistranslated the word for corporation. I suspect you translated “Konzern” from german to english’s “concern”. But I’m honestly unsure. In context the word concern could almost work.

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Curious indeed! Merriam-Webster tells me that one definition of "concern," as a noun, is `an organization or establishment for business or manufacture.`

But perhaps this is not in common use amongst native English speakers!

Native English speaker. Well aware of concern used to reflect a business.

I mainly see that definition used in the context of the phrase “going concern” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_concern

If you check english wikipedia, it lists “Concern” as a type of business structure that predominantly exists in Germany[0]. The word has be pulled into english, but it’s definitely not a commonly used english word, and it is likely pedantically inaccurate in reference to an American corporation.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concern_(business)

It is quite accurate for an American company, the word "concern" used in that way is just more common in formal writing and in older writing. This is yet another victim of the shrinking common English vocabulary inflicted in large part by the Internet, but also other social forces.

For usages like this, it's usually better to use books.google.com. There, you can find many instances of the phrase "American concern" used to mean "American company" by everyone from official US government sources to journalists to writers.

The usage dates back quite some time, if it was borrowed from the German and not a native English word descended from Old English, it was more than a hundred years ago. It certainly predates the modern German legal definition of a concern.

Here is an English example from 1840: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_North_American_Revi...

EDIT: This definition is also in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary.

It's somewhat common, but probably not the most popular usage. I think most people who read business news regularly would see it used in sentences like, "Due to Company Foo's dire financial situation, they will cease to be a going concern".

It is less common nowadays, but that is one of the definitions of “concern” in English: a company or a corporation. So it’s entirely correct as is.

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