A person who travels around selling goods, usually small items, from place to place or door to door.
From 'peddle,' which comes from 'peddlar,' possibly derived from 'ped-' (foot) in the sense of traveling on foot, or from Old English 'pydele' (a basket). The word has been used since the 1500s for traveling merchants.
Peddlers were often marginalized outsiders—Jewish, Romani, or other groups that faced restrictions on owning land or shops—yet they became the connective tissue of pre-industrial economies, carrying goods and news across regions.
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