huckster

From Middle English hukster, from Middle Dutch hokester, itself from hoeken (“to peddle”); compare hawkster.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈhʌkstɚ/

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huckster (plural hucksters)

1. A peddler or hawker, who sells small items, either door-to-door, from a stall, or in the street.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Jonathan Swift to this entry?)

2. Somebody who sells things in an aggressive or showy manner.
3. One who deceptively sells fraudulent products.
4. Somebody who writes advertisements for radio or television.
5. A mean, deceptive person.
   • Bishop Hall

     Instead of turning to me and keeping to the works of charity and justice, he is a mere heathen huckster.

   • 2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36:

     Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between. For every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth.

• pitchman
• spruiker

• Huckster in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

huckster (third-person singular simple present hucksters, present participle huckstering, simple past and past participle huckstered)

1. (intransitive) To haggle, to wrangle, or to bargain.
2. (transitive) To sell or offer goods from place to place, to peddle.
3. (transitive) To promote or sell goods in an aggressive, showy manner.

• hucksterism

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967

• Kutchers