huckster
/ˈhʌkstɚ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.03 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A peddler or hawker, who sells small items, either door-to-door, from a stall, or in the street.
noun
One who deceptively sells fraudulent products; snake oil salesman.
noun
Somebody who writes advertisements for radio or television.
Example Sentences
- "drive those china hucksters from the doors"
- "Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between. For every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth."
- "[…] Paul Zindel aroused the hope that he might be a playwright in the Williams mode, one who could cast a kindly light in the dark corners of twisted souls. That is precisely the hope dashed by his latest play, The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild. Here he is simply huckstering kookdom for cheap laughs, and not producing many of them at that."
Etymology
From Middle English hukster, probably of Low German or Dutch origin, from Middle Low German höken (“to peddle”) or Middle Dutch hokester, itself from hoeken (“to peddle, bend, bear on the back”), all from Proto-Germanic *huk-, probably related to *hūkan- (“to squat”), from *hūkkan-, back-formed from the iterative *huk(k)ōn-, from Proto-Indo-European *kuk-néh₂, from *kewk- (“to curve, bend”) (also the source of English high). Compare hawkster. By surface analysis, huck + -ster.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈhʌkstɚ/