Crossword clues for huckster
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Huckster \Huck"ster\, n. [OE. hukstere, hukster, OD. heukster, D. heuker; akin to D. huiken to stoop, bend, OD. huycken, huken, G. hocken, to squat, Icel. h?ka; -- the peddler being named from his stooping under the load on his back. Cf. Hawk to offer for sale.]
A retailer of small articles, of provisions, and the like; a peddler; a hawker.
--Swift.A mean, trickish fellow.
--Bp. Hall.
Huckster \Huck"ster\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Huckstered; p. pr. &
vb. n. Huckstering.]
To deal in small articles, or in petty bargains.
--Swift.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1200, "petty merchant, peddler" (often contemptuous), from Middle Dutch hokester "peddler," from hoken "to peddle" (see hawk (v.1)) + agent suffix -ster (which was typically feminine in English, but not in Low German). Specific sense of "advertising salesman" is from 1946 novel by Frederick Wakeman. As a verb, from 1590s. Related: Huckstered; huckstering.
Wiktionary
n. 1 A peddler or hawker, who sells small items, either door-to-door, from a stall(,) or in the street. 2 Somebody who sell#Verbs things in an aggressive#Adjective or showy#Adjective manner. 3 One who deceptively#Adverb sells fraudulent#Adjective product#Nouns. 4 Somebody who writes advertisement#Nouns for radio or television. 5 A mean#Adjective, deceptive#Adjective person. vb. 1 (context intransitive English) To haggle, to wrangle, or to bargain. 2 (context transitive English) To sell or offer goods from place to place, to peddle. 3 (context transitive English) To promote/sell goods in an aggressive/ showy manner.
WordNet
n. a seller of shoddy goods [syn: cheap-jack]
a person who writes radio or tv advertisements
v. sell or offer for sale from place to place [syn: peddle, monger, hawk, vend, pitch]
wrangle (over a price, terms of an agreement, etc.); "Let's not haggle over a few dollars" [syn: haggle, higgle, chaffer]
Wikipedia
Particularly in the United States, a huckster is a pejorative for a person who sells something or serves biased interests, using pushy or showy tactics.
Usage examples of "huckster".
I thank God I am a bookseller, trafficking in the dreams and beauties and curiosities of humanity rather than some mere huckster of merchandise.
Luckily enough though, I had the previous week purchased a Saab 9000 from a huckster culchie car dealer I had met in the car one Sunday night, so after a week of toing and froing between insurers, Dublin City Council and the NCTS, I was back on the road.
He might, for all Myrna or Johnson knew, have enlisted an entire army of grifters, grafters, hucksters and dips, who could communicate in ways even a thousand-year-old layman could not hope to grasp.
The freed slave who owned the building and charged exorbitant rents, extorting one out of every three reales from the putas and sugarcane hucksters he boarded, clearly did not bother with repairs.
Even now, riding through Cheapside to vist the Strand, he was distressed, unreasonably, because among the bawling, huckstering, hurrying crowds, no heads turned as he passed.
Duly next morning the rosy-fingered Aurora drew the gold and crimson curtains of the east, and the splendid Apollo, stepping forth from his chamber, took the reins of his unrivalled team, and driving four-in-hand through the sky, like a great swell as he is, took small note of the staring hucksters and publicans by the road-side, and sublimely overlooked the footsore and ragged pedestrians that crawl below his level.
A few officers, who had been dining with the various generals who had their headquarters there, or with friends on board ship, were the sole people in the streets, although from some of the closed windows of the drinking-shops in the Greek quarter came sounds of singing and noise, for every one was earning high wages, and the place was full of Maltese, Alexandrians, Smyrniotes, and, indeed, the riff-raff of all the Mediterranean cities, who had flocked to the scene of action to make money as petty traders, hucksters, camp-followers, mule-drivers, or commissariat-laborers.
At present date he weighs 150 pounds, and drives a huckster wagon for a living, showing very little loss of motion in his lower extremities.
Hucksters, well dressed and ill dressed, women, pretty and plain, women who stared boldly at everyone, modest maidens with downcast eyes, such was the picture I saw.
He might, for all Myrna or Johnson knew, have enlisted an entire army of grifters, grafters, hucksters and dips, who could communicate in ways even a thousand-year-old layman could not hope to grasp.
Pedro, and the King of Majorca, and the King of Navarre, who is no two days of the same mind, and the Gascon barons who are all chaffering for terms like so many hucksters, he hath an uneasy part to play.
Walking on the cobblestone street, he led her around black hucksters, who were musically crying out the quality of their wares.
They vended their democratic ideology like hucksters, supported by the great protection racket of armaments deals and economic pressures.
That deep and generous thinker, who, more than any of her philosophical writers, represents the higher thought of England, John Stuart Mill, has spoken for us in tones to which none but her sordid hucksters and her selfish land-graspers can refuse to listen.
No one approached the ship, no dock authority demanded to know their business, no hucksters swarmed over to push their wares, no sailors lounged about, idly eyeing the cut of their jib.