merchant vs proprietress

merchant

noun
  • The owner or operator of a retail business. 

  • A trading vessel; a merchantman. 

  • A person who traffics in commodities for profit. 

  • Someone who is noted for a stated type of activity or behaviour. 

verb
  • As a resident of a region, to buy goods from a non-resident and sell them to another non-resident. 

proprietress

noun
  • A female proprietor. 

How often have the words merchant and proprietress occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )