the act of making a purchase, or of acquiring the property of a thing for a certain price.

Buying stands opposed to selling, and differs from borrowing or hiring, as in the former the property of the thing is alienated for perpetuity, which in the latter is not. By the civil law, persons are allowed to buy hope, *spem pretio emere*, that is, to purchase the event or expectation of any thing. E.g., The fish or birds a person shall catch, or the money he shall win in gaming.

There are different species of buying in use among traders; as, buying on one's own account, opposed to buying on commission; buying for ready money, which is when the purchaser pays in actual specie on the spot; buying on credit, or for a time certain, is when the payment is not to be presently made, but, in lieu thereof, an obligation given by the buyer for payment at a time future; buying on delivery, is when the goods purchased are only to be delivered at a certain time future.

**Buying the refusal**, is giving money for the right or liberty of purchasing a thing at a fixed price, in a certain time to come; chiefly used in dealing for shares in stock. This is sometimes also called by a cant name, *buying the bear*.

**Buying the small-pox**, is an appellation given to a method of procuring that disease by an operation similar to inoculation; frequent in South Wales, where it has obtained time out of mind. It is performed either by rubbing some of the pus taken out of a pustule of a variolous person on the skin, or by making a puncture in the skin with a pin dipped in such pus.