pedlar
/ˈpɛdlə
/noun chiefly British
1A person who goes from place to place selling small goods: the visit of the pedlar to Irish country houses was a very special event in the lives of children in the 1950s...
- They came as sailors, pedlars, traders of all sorts, cloth merchants, spice dealers, preachers, teachers and sometimes all of the above in a single lifetime.
- Before then, buying and selling occurred through fairs, market-stalls, artisans' workshops, or itinerant pedlars.
- Prices were partly determined by the efficiency of merchants, traders, and peddlers, as we will see in the next section.
Synonyms
travelling salesman, door-to-door salesman;
street trader;
British barrow boy;
West Indian higgler
British informal fly-pitcher
dated hawker
archaic chapman, packman
rare huckster, crier, colporteur
trafficker, dealer
informal pusher
2 variant spelling of peddler (sense 1).
Usage
See pedal1 (usage)
Derivatives
pedlary
Origin
Middle English: perhaps an alteration of synonymous dialect pedder, apparently from dialect ped 'pannier'.