PEDLAR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does pedlar mean? 

• PEDLAR (noun)
  The noun PEDLAR has 1 sense:

1. someone who travels about selling his wares (as on the streets or at carnivals)

  Familiarity information: PEDLAR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PEDLAR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who travels about selling his wares (as on the streets or at carnivals)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

hawker; packman; peddler; pedlar; pitchman

Hypernyms ("pedlar" is a kind of...):

marketer; seller; trafficker; vender; vendor (someone who promotes or exchanges goods or services for money)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "pedlar"):

chapman (archaic term for an itinerant peddler)

cheapjack (a peddler of inferior goods)

crier (a peddler who shouts to advertise the goods he sells)

muffin man (formerly an itinerant peddler of muffins)

sandboy (a young peddler of sand; used now only to express great happiness in 'happy as a sandboy')

transmigrante (a Latin American who buys used goods in the United States and takes them to Latin America to sell)

 Context examples 

See, said she, I have bought all these with your yellow buttons: but I did not touch them myself; the pedlars went themselves and dug them up.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwayman, and bullies.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

On the walls there were some common coloured pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects; such as I have never seen since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing the whole interior of Peggotty's brother's house again, at one view.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

As soon as he was gone, there came by some pedlars with earthenware plates and dishes, and they asked her whether she would buy.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

I have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

And she could not bear to think that anyone lived who was more beautiful than she was; so she dressed herself up as an old pedlar, and went her way over the hills, to the place where the dwarfs dwelt.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)