Learn English – English term for aggressive street seller

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Is there an English term for the type of street seller who aggressively sells his products? The type who yell after you and may follow you as you walk down the street?

Best Answer

We refer to that salesman as a hawker:

A person who travels about selling goods, typically advertising them by shouting:

I have always carried the word picture of a hawker swooping down to seize his customer with that shrill falcon scream, but the two hawks are homophones from different semantic roots:

hawk

(n.) c.1300, hauk, earlier havek (c.1200),

from Old English hafoc (W. Saxon), heafuc (Mercian), heafoc, from Proto-Germanic * habukaz

(cognates: Old Norse haukr, Old Saxon habuc, Middle Dutch havik, Old High German habuh, German Habicht "hawk"),

from a root meaning "to seize," from PIE *kap- "to grasp" (cognates: Russian kobec "a kind of falcon;" see capable).

hawk

(v.1) "to sell in the open, peddle," late 15c.,

back-formation from hawker "itinerant vendor" (c.1400),

from Middle Low German höken "to peddle, carry on the back, squat,"

from Proto-Germanic * huk-.

Related: Hawked; hawking. Despite the etymological connection with stooping under a burden on one's back, a hawker is technically distinguished from a peddler by use of a horse and cart or a van.

From the same peddling roots, huckster implies more aggressive than a hawker, and even a bit devious:

A person who sells in an aggressive or ruthless way.

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