huckster
/ˈhʌkstɚ/
huckster noun: a peddler or hawker, who sells small items, either door-to-door, from a stall, or in the street.
Noun
huckster (plural hucksters)
- A peddler or hawker, who sells small items, either door-to-door, from a stall, or in the street.
- drive those china hucksters from the doors1731 (date written; published 1745), [Jonathan] Swift, Directions to Servants […], London: […] R[obert] Dodsley, […], and M. Cooper, […], →OCLC
- Somebody who sells things in an aggressive or showy manner.
- 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...2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36
- One who deceptively sells fraudulent products; snake oil salesman.
- Somebody who writes advertisements for radio or television.
Verb
huckster (third-person singular simple present hucksters, present participle huckstering, simple past and past participle huckstered)
- To haggle, to wrangle, or to bargain.
- To sell or offer (goods) from place to place, to peddle.
- To promote or sell (goods) in an aggressive, showy manner.
- […] 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...1972 November 27, T.E.K., “Kook in a Candy Store”, in Time, volume 100, number 22, Chicago, Ill.: Time Inc., The Theater, page 73
huckster meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
huckster in Tamil
- திரிந்து விற்பவர், கூவி விற்பவர்
huckster in Urdu
- بساطی, دست فروش, خسیس, نیچ, پھیری والا
huckster in Bengali
- ছোটো ব্যবসায়ী, ফেরিওয়ালা, কূটচালী
huckster in Malayalam
- dealer, trader, seller
- അല്പവണികൻ, അല്പവ്യാപാരി, മാറ്റക്കാരൻ, വില്പ്പനക്കാരൻ, ചില്ലറവ്യാപാരി, നടന്നു വില്പന നടത്തുന്നവൻ
Examples of huckster in a sentence
- Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between.2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36:
- Here he is simply huckstering kookdom for cheap laughs, and not producing many of them at that.1972 November 27, T.E.K., “Kook in a Candy Store”, in Time, volume 100, number 22, Chicago, Ill.: Time Inc., The Theater, page 73:
Forms of huckster
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | hucksters |
| alternative form (dated) | huxter |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | hucksters |
| present participle | huckstering |
| past participle | huckstered |
| past | huckstered |
Origin of huckster
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.
Words formed from huckster
Questions about huckster
- What does huckster mean?
- Huckster means a peddler or hawker, who sells small items, either door-to-door, from a stall, or in the street.
- What is huckster in Tamil?
- Huckster in Tamil is திரிந்து விற்பவர், கூவி விற்பவர். See Huckster meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use huckster in a sentence?
- Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between.
- What part of speech is huckster?
- Huckster can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce huckster?
- Huckster is pronounced /ˈhʌkstɚ/ (US).
- What is the plural of huckster?
- The plural of huckster is hucksters.
Words near huckster in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: huckster (page history and authors); huckster (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); huckster (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); huckster (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); huckster (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-huckster.ogg.
Cite this entry: “huckster.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/huckster. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.