Bear, name given in the Stock Exchange to one who contracts to deliver stock at a fixed price on a certain day, in contradistinction from the bull, or he who contracts to take it, the interest of the former being that, in the intervening time, the stocks should fall, and that of the latter that they should rise.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of * Bear, Great