Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A peddler of devotional literature.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A person employed by a Bible or tract society, or the like, to distribute gratuitously or sell at low rates Bibles and various other religious publications.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A hawker; specifically, one who travels about selling and distributing religious tracts and books.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
peddler of publications, especially of religious books
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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A heart-shaped bivalve or a garden flower. colporteur
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A heart-shaped bivalve or a garden flower. colporteur
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A heart-shaped bivalve or a garden flower. colporteur
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Perhaps you wonder how so numerous a race of these beings has come to exist; but that boy at your elbow, bending under the weight of his literary burden, is a colporteur for converting the men and women of this "enlightened nation" to rowdyism.
The Elements of Character Mary G. Chandler
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The colporteur made his escape over the wall of the city and fled to the house of some friends in the suburbs near the river-side.
Forty Years in South China The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
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Hence he was a sort of volunteer colporteur distributing gossip, as a notion pedler, before he was a store clerk where centered all the local news.
The Lincoln Story Book Henry Llewellyn Williams
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A colporteur, known to me, when engaged selling Bibles in a Brazilian town, reports that the fanatical populace got his books and carried them, fastened and burning, at the end of blazing torches, while they tramped the streets, yelling: "Away with all false books!"
Through Five Republics on Horseback, Being an Account of Many Wanderings in South America G. Whitfield Ray
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Along these arteries of traffic many tons of tracts and propaganda are hurled annually by train, felucca and colporteur.
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Two only of the vagrant tribe the boy dislikes, the colporteur and the travelling Spiritualist -- two cold, shabby, sniffling beings, each wrapped in a shawl and each driving an old horse afflicted with poll-evil.
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But the worthy lady pronounced colporteur as coalporter, and so on hearing from a friend that "the Coalporters were on strike," Mrs.R. could not help exclaiming, "Dear! how ungrateful of them, when they were being 'so much appreciated by all!'"
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, February 27, 1892 Various
chained_bear commented on the word colporteur
This guy has done some great tunes.
February 21, 2007
trivet commented on the word colporteur
A peddler of devotional literature.
April 9, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word colporteur
I actually clicked on this page to make the same ridiculous joke I did, apparently, 1 year ago.
April 9, 2008
Prolagus commented on the word colporteur
Oh, I thought it was related to the Colbert report.
April 9, 2008