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Peddling   /pˈɛdəlɪŋ/  /pˈɛdlɪŋ/   Listen
Peddling

noun
1.
The act of selling goods for a living.  Synonyms: hawking, vending, vendition.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Peddling" Quotes from Famous Books



... ticket for himself, and went with me!! Mr. Alcott spent an evening with us a week or more ago, and was very interesting; telling, at my request, about his youth, and peddling, etc. There were six ladies and six gentlemen present last Monday evening. They assembled at Mr. Stone's. Miss Hannah Hodges, Mrs. J. C. Lee, and two ladies whom I did not know, besides Mrs. Stone and myself; Mr. Frothingham, Mr. William Silsbee, Mr. Shackford, of Lynn, Mr. Pike, Mr. Streeter, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... is still the case; the poorest and least cultivated classes are not excepted; nay, just in that class it is one of the most noteworthy features. If the uncouth immigrant from Eastern Europe stoops to the lowest kinds of peddling, or, for a mere pittance, wastes his life in the stifling sweatshop; if he is not very scrupulous in his dealings with his transient patrons, and does not hold city ordinances as inviolable as those of the "Shulchan Aruch" ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau

... We passed Cabul merchants peddling their dried fruit on shaggy-haired camels; to these succeeded, in more lonesome portions of the road, small groups of Korkas, wretched remnants of one of the autochthonal families of Central India—even lower in the scale of civilization ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... arrest these incoherencies, or rather, to vary them, a haggard, inspired-looking man now approached—a crazy beggar, asking alms under the form of peddling a rhapsodical tract, composed by himself, and setting forth his claims to some rhapsodical apostleship. Though ragged and dirty, there was about him no touch of vulgarity; for, by nature, his manner was not unrefined, his frame slender, and appeared the more ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... to Royal Highness was conspicuous. Royal Highness, it is said, had been very badly used in this matter by his poor peddling Father and the Hanover Ministers; the matter being one puddle of imbecilities from beginning to end. He was the soul of honor; brave as a Welf lion; but, of dim poor head; and had not the faintest vestige [ALLERGERINGSTE says ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... so, at length, he, with one Stephen Rutland, who had lived with him two years before, resolved to make their escape, and, about the year 1673, meditated all secret ways to compass it. They had before taken up a way of peddling about the country, and buying tobacco, pepper, garlic, combs, and all sorts of iron ware, and carried them into those parts of the country where they wanted them; and now, to promote their design, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... and Surajah set to work to perfect their disguises. They had, before, appeared simply as two young traders, well to do, and of a class above the ordinary peddling merchant. They now fitted on the ample beards that had been made at Tripataly. These were attached so firmly to their faces, by an adhesive wax, that they could not be pulled off without the use of a good deal of force. With the same stuff, small patches of hair were fastened on, so as to ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... and it was often safer to ride in the ditch than on the road. The village, with a tramway through it, stood high and healthy. The best houses were those of the Chinese. The poorer Chinese find peddling employments and trade about the villages, rather than hard work on the estates; while they cultivate on ridges, with minute care, their favourite sweet potato. Round San Fernando, a Chinese will ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... withdrew unabashed, outwardly unperturbed, seeming to take stately leave. Only her persistence showed how anxious she was to earn money; neither on her features nor in her voice appeared the least sign of peddling solicitude. I shall always remember that tall, hard-visaged woman, as she passed with firm step and nobly balanced figure about the streets of Catanzaro. To pity her would have been an insult. The glimpse I caught of her laborious life revealed ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... myself, "here is Common-sense in the shape of a half-witted peddling fellow, blundering into Arcadia, in the shape of a haunted cottage, a woman, and a man. Straightway our Pedler, being Common-sense, misjudges us—as, indeed, would every other common-sense individual the world over; for Arcadia, being of itself abstract and immaterial, is ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... you, old man! You sure are a sport. Nothing like selling something that doesn't even exist! I see you years hence on Wall Street, peddling nebulous gold ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... orient himself in Bassett's story. A doctor. The devil's irony of it! Some poor hack, losing sleep and bringing babies. Peddling pills. Leading what Bassett had called a life of usefulness! That was a career for you, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... something like five hundred. I did not use this cash, however, in the payment of the Company's debts. I expected to have to return to the United States through Siberia, and I did not propose to put myself in such a position that I should be compelled to defray my travelling expenses by peddling lime-juice, cucumber pickles, telegraph wire, dried apples, glass insulators, and baking-powder along the road. I therefore persuaded the Company's creditors, who, fortunately, were not very numerous, to take tea and sugar in satisfaction of their claims, so that I might ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... hitherto delighted to bend his will, morality, duty, now seemed to him to have no truth, nor reason. Their jealous despotism was smashed against Nature. Human nature, healthy, strong, free, that alone was virtue: to hell with all the rest! It provoked pitying laughter to see the little peddling rules of prudence and policy which the world adorns with the name of morality, while it pretends to inclose all life within them. A preposterous mole-hill, an ant-like people! Life sees to it that they are brought to reason. Life does but pass, and ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... last impudent page began rolling like a pig upon my mbugued or carpeted floor, till I stormed and swore I would turn him out unless he chose to behave more respectfully before my majesty, for I was no peddling merchant, as he had been accustomed to see, and would not stand it; moreover, I would not leave my hut at the summons of the king or anybody else, until I chose ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... come to look the herd over before it starts out. Now, Dupree is a good cowman, but he's got a wife already. And Camp, the financial man of the firm, made his money peddling Yankee clocks. Now, you don't suppose for a moment I'd let you marry him and carry you away from Las Palomas. Marry an old clock peddler?—not if he had a million! The idea! If they come down here and I catch you smiling on old Camp, I'll set the hounds on you. What you want to ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... and her own. Wells had spoken of Forrest's proud and powerful kindred in the East, of a mother and sister who held their heads far higher than ever could John Allison, who forty years before was but a train-boy peddling peanuts for a livelihood. Even in the wildly improbable event of her soldier knight's learning to love her, what madness it would be to expect his people to welcome her, what madness to think of being his without that welcome! ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... common practice of degenerates spoiling the lives and futures of other people's children by training them to become tramps, drunkards, professional beggars and even dangerous criminals, viz: "Should any minor be found beyond the limits of his legal residence tramping, peddling, begging or stealing at the command or for the benefit of an adult person, who cannot prove that he had the legal consent of the minor's guardian, then this adult person shall be sentenced to a long term at hard labor ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... welcomes back 15 Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good: No lore of Greece or Rome, No science peddling with the names of things, 20 Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, Can lift our life with wings Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, And lengthen out our dates With that clear fame whose memory sings 25 In manly hearts to come, and nerves ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... with another curse or two thrown in by way of emphasis. 'You may be some cursed Yankee, peddling buttons, and afraid ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... from the duties of the sovereignty in favour of such a son had proved a constitutional unfitness for the duties of his station. The life he loved was one of seclusion in a round of pious exercises, petty studies, peddling economies, and mechanical amusements. A powerful and grasping Pope was on the throne of Rome. Urban at this juncture pressed Francesco Maria hard; and in 1624 the last Duke of Urbino devolved his lordships to the Holy See. He survived the formal act of abdication ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... and the rangers swore gently, and mopped their brows in their convenient but close quarters. For an hour no one had crossed save an old woman enveloped in a brown wrapper and a black mantilla, driving before her a burro loaded with kindling wood tied in small bundles for peddling. Then three shots were fired down the street, the sound coming clear and snappy ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... the shame of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then, forgetting our paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken the true man in us, and kill the peddling creature we so wrongly call our self. The true self is that which can look Jesus in the face, and say ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... viva for Milan? They swear that it was, and they can't translate from a living mouth, much more from a dead one; but I know my Niccolo better. I have kissed his lips a thousand times, and I know the poor boy meant, 'Scorn and eternal distrust of such peddling conspirators as these!' I can deal with traitors, but these flash-in-the-pan plotters—these shaking, jelly-bodied patriots!—trust to them again? Rather draw lots for another fifteen to bare their breasts and bandage their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... currency to the delusion, certainly cherished by some moderate Gladstonians, that Home Rule can be identified with or cut down to extended local self-government,[136] will be fatal to the cause of Unionism. The concession to Ireland of a petty, paltry, peddling legislature, which dare hardly call itself a Parliament, and is officially designated say as a national council, combined with some faint imitation of a Cabinet, called say a committee, would disappoint and irritate Home Rulers; it would cheat their hopes, but it would ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... who put your superior where he is. He'd still be peddling papers if I hadn't got him into ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault

... statesman to be a Secretary of State augurs a certain amount of brain, though not necessarily of the highest quality; while it certainly betokens a good deal of dash and impudence. Carl Perousse, one of the most prominent among the political notabilities of Europe, had begun his career by small peddling transactions in iron and timber manufactures; he came of a very plebeian stock, and had received only a desultory sort of education, picked up here and there in cheap provincial schools. But he had ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... waist—ready to be expended for clocks and calicoes, horn buttons and wooden combs, knives, and negro-handkerchiefs, whenever their proprietor should determine upon a proper whereabout in which to fix himself. Bunce had grown tired of peddling—the trade was not less uncertain than fatiguing. Besides, travelling so much among the southrons, he had imbibed not a few of their prejudices against his vocation, and, to speak the truth, had grown somewhat ashamed of his present mode of life. He was becoming rapidly aristocratic, as ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... more marvelous escapes than any man in the history of piracy, with the exception of Black Jack Morgan? "Impossible!" you say. "Why, that man is nothing but an old farmer," you cry in disappointment. "He ought to be peddling vegetables in a ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... again clouded. A few years ago, he had been peddling his manuscripts with the heart-sickness of unsuccessful middle age. To-day, men coupled his name with those of Kipling and De Maupassant. One of his antipathies was meeting people who sought to lionize him. Lescott read the expression, and, before ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... 'em more than usual this year, and it makes 'em kind of sloppy to eat," he apologized; "it doesn't help the flavor any, but most people buy for size. When you're out peddling and haven't time to cultivate, it's easy to turn on the water. It's about as bad as a milkman putting water in the milk, and I always feel mean about it. I tell mother errigating's a lazy man's way of farming, but she says water costs so much here ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... tell me, Pawson, that that scoundrel, Gadgem, has—Todd go down and bring him up here immediately—has had the audacity to run a pawnshop for my benefit without so much as asking my leave?—peddling my things?—lying to me straight through?" Here the door opened and Gadgem's face peered in. He had, as was his custom, crept upstairs so as to be ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... experiments on the frock, the bonnet, and the hoop petticoat bought for her in London and sent like the proverbial pig in a poke, had taken to watching the Yankee peddling sloop, which, having lain for an hour at Patterson's on the Virginia shore, was now heading for the Browne place. It was pretty to see the sloop heel over under a beam wind and shoot steadily forward, while ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... same class of agents to go forth into all the world and preach the gospel of tree planting and—sell trees. Others have sold and continue to sell trees to peddlers without limit, for cash, and of any and all varieties called for, while they denounced the system of peddling in unmeasured terms. Now it is just as possible for a tree peddler to be an honest man as it is for the man who grows trees to sell to be honest. I do not say that all men belonging to either class are honest. It would be equally absurd to say that all of ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... when they died,—the blackmailers asserting that it was necessary for those who obtained citizenship from him to do both of these things. The emperor now stepped in and forbade that any one should be called to account for such negligence.—Now Messalina and his freedmen kept offering for sale and peddling out not merely the franchise, and military posts, and positions as procurator, and governmental offices, but everything in general to such an extent that all necessaries grew scarce[7]; and Claudius was forced to muster the populace on the Campus Martius and there from ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... He apparently had plenty of money, and had the entree of the best houses in the city,—taking care, however, I suppose, to drive no bargains within the enchanted circle of the Upper Ten. I came at length to the conclusion that this peddling was but a mask to cover some greater object, and even went so far as to believe my young acquaintance to be implicated in the slave-trade. That, however, was ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... otherwise a good-natured man, was very hard-hearted to his sister Peg, chiefly from an aversion he had conceived in his infancy. While he flourished, kept a warm house, and drove a plentiful trade, poor Peg was forced to go hawking and peddling about the streets selling knives, scissors, and shoe-buckles; now and then carried a basket of fish to the market; sewed, spun, and knit for a livelihood, till her fingers' ends were sore; and when she could not get bread for her family, she was forced to hire them out at journey-work ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... earth can equal the malice of an old squaw," said Phoebe, breaking into the silence which followed. "I'd hope she don't go around peddling that story—not that anyone would ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... a true son of peddling, he would have charged a dollar extra on each of the nineteen, and made eleven dollars ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Peddling" :   peddle, marketing, vending, hawking, merchandising, selling



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