ABSTRACT
There were three commonly used English equivalents of the French term “entrepreneur” in the eighteenth century: “adventurer,” “projector,” and “undertaker.” The first term was applied in the fifteenth century to merchants operating at some risk and in the seventeenth century to land speculators, farmers, and those who directed certain public-works projects. During the eighteenth century, the term adventurer gradually gave way to the more general term undertaker, which had become synonymous with an ordinary businessman by the time Adam Smith emerged as a progenitor of political economy. The term projector was equivalent to the other two in a fundamental sense, but it more often had the pejorative connotation of a cheat and a rogue. The word undertaker was not only used more often, it also took on more varied meanings, and its history more or less paralleled the development of its French counterpart.
