A person, especially a religious missionary or agent, who travels selling or distributing literature, particularly religious books and moral tracts.
From French 'colporteur,' derived from 'col' (neck) + 'porter' (to carry). This French loanword became the standard term in English and other European languages for systematic religious literature distributors.
The colporteur is almost extinct now—a victim of the internet and globalization—but they represented a crucial phase of mass communication history when information needed to be carried by hand, step by step, town by town.
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