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Peddling   Listen
adjective
Peddling  adj.  
1.
Hawking; acting as a peddler.
2.
Petty; insignificant; trifling; paltry; piddling; now less common than piddling. "The miserable remains of a peddling commerce."
Synonyms: petty; insignificant; trifling; paltry; piddling.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Peddling" Quotes from Famous Books



... waist—ready to be expended for clocks and calicoes, horn buttons and wooden combs, knives, and negro-handkerchiefs, whenever their proprietor should determine upon a proper whereabout in which to fix himself. Bunce had grown tired of peddling—the trade was not less uncertain than fatiguing. Besides, travelling so much among the southrons, he had imbibed not a few of their prejudices against his vocation, and, to speak the truth, had grown somewhat ashamed of his present mode of life. He was becoming rapidly aristocratic, as ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... truth, nor reason. Their jealous despotism was smashed against Nature. Human nature, healthy, strong, free, that alone was virtue: to hell with all the rest! It provoked pitying laughter to see the little peddling rules of prudence and policy which the world adorns with the name of morality, while it pretends to inclose all life within them. A preposterous mole-hill, an ant-like people! Life sees to it that they are brought to reason. Life does but pass, and ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... slave-traders! The men who live and grow rich by a traffic in human flesh and blood in the colonies, are conducting at home a campaign in the sacred name of liberty! Don't you see that the whole movement is a movement of hucksters and traders and peddling vassals swollen by wealth into envy of the power that lies in birth alone? The money-changers in Paris who hold the bonds in the national debt, seeing the parlous financial condition of the State, tremble at the thought that it may lie in the power of a single man to cancel the debt by ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... uncle Ro been a true son of peddling, he would have charged a dollar extra on each of the nineteen, and made eleven dollars by ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... crossed to the golden-oak piano between the windows, her negligee open its full length and revealing her nightdress; crossed with a slight limp and the dog yapping at the soiled and lacy train; fell to manipulating the self-playing attachment, peddling out a metallic ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... in the fact hat he tore himself clear of all those peddling and pitiful compromises, those half humorous concessions, those lazy conventionalisms, with which most people cover their brains as if with wool, and ballast their imagination as if with ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... hearing developed that forty ex-saloon keepers and bartenders had these petitions on the bars in their soft drink places; 831 names were secured by Dick Kennedy, a negro who could neither read nor write. He appeared in court in jail clothes, being under indictment for peddling "dope," and was unable to identify the petitions certified by him. Ten boys, ranging in age from 8 to 15, were circulators. Several men who could not read or write testified that they supposed their names were being taken for a census. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... the world and preach the gospel of tree planting and—sell trees. Others have sold and continue to sell trees to peddlers without limit, for cash, and of any and all varieties called for, while they denounced the system of peddling in unmeasured terms. Now it is just as possible for a tree peddler to be an honest man as it is for the man who grows trees to sell to be honest. I do not say that all men belonging to either class are honest. It ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... one big thing that drives me up here every time, in spite of myself? It's the thought of—dad. How do you suppose I feel to think of dad peddling peas and beans and potatoes down ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... inconsiderable, so-so, insignificant, inappreciable. trifling, trivial; slight, slender, light, flimsy, frothy, idle; puerile &c. (foolish) 499; airy, shallow; weak &c. 160; powerless &c. 158; frivolous, petty, niggling; piddling, peddling; fribble[obs3], inane, ridiculous, farcical; finical, finikin[obs3]; fiddle-faddle, fingle- fangle[obs3], namby-pamby, wishy-washy, milk and water. poor, paltry, pitiful; contemptible &c. (contempt) 930; sorry, mean, meager, shabby, miserable, wretched, vile, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... can equal the malice of an old squaw," said Phoebe, breaking into the silence which followed. "I'd hope she don't go around peddling that story—not that ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... record with a resolution calling for the protection of the uniform. Those firms and individuals who had used the uniform as a method of peddling their wares were scored in the resolution and it was the sense of the motion that everything possible should be done to prevent panhandlers and peddlers on the streets wearing the uniform of ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat

... iron bar had been fastened across the exact center of the opening, since the former owner of the shanty-boat did not enjoy the thought that roving boys might enter and pillage while he was on his route, peddling the ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... Vuyning, with a laugh, "that my ancestors picked up the knack while they were peddling clothes from house to house a couple of hundred years ago. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... ancient or modern, in six months. He traveled throughout Europe, endeavoring to sell his discovery to princes and men of learning. Purchasers had to agree strictly to maintain the secret. Professor Williams speaks of this conduct as follows: "These were the acts of a charlatan peddling some secret quack nostrum."[93] Mr. Quick says, "He would also found a school in which all arts and sciences should be rapidly learned and advanced; he would introduce, and peacefully maintain throughout the continent, a uniform speech, a uniform government, and, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... daily avocations not permitting of this; but, for the rest of our stay at the seashore, he purposed obtaining the services of an acquaintance who belonged in the place, and who was in the habit of peddling about papers, periodicals, an assortment of very inferior confectionery, and other small wares. The proceeds of these sales made here at the seaside, deducting a commission for the boy-vender, Jim hoped ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... Carry," he said, sorrowfully. "I'm not fit to handle these man's-size schemes any longer. Peddling oranges in a push-cart is about the suitable graft for me. When I said ten thousand, I swear I thought I had sized up that brown man's limit to within two cents. He'd have melted down for fifteen thousand just as easy. Say—Carry—you'll see old man Keogh safe in ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... informed the hen and then since there was no hurry about the potatoes she fell to dreaming again. It was very peaceful on the shady porch with that whirlwind of a Judy gone for several hours on one of her crazy peddling jaunts. What a girl she was for plunging! Again the mother wondered where she came from and for the ten thousandth time agreed with herself that it must be the blood of the Norse sailor cropping out in ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... Rondibilis, forgot the poor devil Cuckoldry, who was then in the court at Paris very eagerly soliciting a peddling suit at law for one of his vassals and tenants. Within some few days thereafter, I have forgot how many, when he got full notice of the trick which in his absence was done unto him, he instantly desisted from prosecuting legal processes in the behalf of others, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... "did you hear that cough-lozenge-peddling boob trying to tell me where to get off, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... is you must, my dear Mr. Wylder, make an effort. It won't do peddling and tinkering in such a case. You will be in a worse position than ever, unless you boldly raise a thousand pounds—if I can manage such a transaction upon a security of the kind. Consolidate all your liabilities, and keep a sum in hand. You ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... of Europeans furnish the principal markets for carp. The Jewish people will not, as a rule, buy carp unless they are alive, so it is not an uncommon thing to see fish dealers in the Hebrew quarters pushing through the streets carts constructed as tanks and peddling the carp alive. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... we've got about the same idea of it; it's my opinion he is paid by somebody, and that somebody is Van Dorn, or whoever's backing him. I don't put much stock in this machinery business of his; he don't act like a fellow that needs to go peddling machines about the country, and I notice he don't seem in any great rush about putting it up, now he's got here; he ain't one of the kind that has to rustle for a living, like you and me. I think he's just out here getting pointers on the mines for that old fellow ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... such as you. So's England. The war's gone two years and you're still here, going around telling other men to go to the front. Go there yourself, and get a taste of it. When you've put in fourteen months in hell like I did, you won't go around peddling the brand of hot air you've shot ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... leisurely along. We passed Cabul merchants peddling their dried fruit on shaggy-haired camels; to these succeeded, in more lonesome portions of the road, small groups of Korkas, wretched remnants of one of the autochthonal families of Central India—even lower in the scale of civilization ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... I commenced a new business—that of peddling in the village of Rochester such articles as my employer, Mr. Comstock, desired to sell: the products of his farm,—wheat, corn, oats, butter, cheese, meat, and poultry—all of which met a ready sale, generally for cash at liberal prices. That market was then but little known to the generality ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... little Italian singer, was skipping rope on the pavement below the window, and a robin was calling lustily to its mate in a nearby horse-chestnut tree, and a vender was peddling his wares down the street in a voice that sounded like a slow-pealing bell, poor Keineth felt as if she could never be really happy again! That night Daddy and Keineth went uptown for dinner. In one of the hotels they met Mr. Lee. Keineth's heart was pounding with dread beneath ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott

... freely admitted to myself that I had undervalued him; that he was no crude Belleville orator, no sentimental bathos-peddling reformer, no sansculotte with brains ablaze, squalling for indiscriminate slaughter and pillage; he was a cool student in crime, taking no chances that he was not forced to take, a calm, adroit, methodical observer, who had established a theory and was carefully engaged ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... voice of entreaty, "don't be satisfied, don't let yourself be lulled to sleep! While you are young, strong, wealthy, do not cease to do good! Happiness does not exist, nor should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not in our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... peddling baskets at my house, and we traded the shoes to her for two baskets. I kept one and he the other. Not long after that he was burned to death in a forest fire, and when I packed his belongings to send to his mother the little basket was ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... badly demoralised by long inactivity, had been approached by both sides. The regiment held a meeting to decide what action to take. Resolved, that the regiment remain neutral, and continue its present activities-which consisted in peddling rubbers and ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... himself in Bassett's story. A doctor. The devil's irony of it! Some poor hack, losing sleep and bringing babies. Peddling pills. Leading what Bassett had called a life of usefulness! That was a career for you, a ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... blow. His withdrawal from the duties of the sovereignty in favour of such a son had proved a constitutional unfitness for the duties of his station. The life he loved was one of seclusion in a round of pious exercises, petty studies, peddling economies, and mechanical amusements. A powerful and grasping Pope was on the throne of Rome. Urban at this juncture pressed Francesco Maria hard; and in 1624 the last Duke of Urbino devolved his lordships to the Holy See. He survived the formal act of abdication ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... 1829 the viva voce method of voting was restored. The judges and clerks sat at a table with the poll-book before them. The voter walked up, and announced the candidate of his choice, and it was recorded in his presence. There was no ticket peddling, and ballot-box stuffing was impossible. To this simple system we are indebted for the record of Lincoln's first vote. As will be seen from the fac-simile, Lincoln voted for James Turney for Congressman, Bowling Green and Edmund Greer for Magistrates, and John Armstrong and Henry ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... Reverend Mother welcomes back 15 Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good: No lore of Greece or Rome, No science peddling with the names of things, 20 Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, Can lift our life with wings Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, And lengthen out our dates With that clear fame whose memory sings 25 In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates: ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... attired: the greater number of the women carrying burdens on their heads,—peddling vegetables, cakes, fruit, ready-cooked food, from door to door,—are very simply dressed in a single plain robe of vivid colors (douillette) reaching from neck to feet, and made with a train, but generally ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... may have run into the Spy, but I doubt it. He'll probably show up in the Hub eventually with the gems he took from Calat, and if he doesn't get caught peddling them he may wind up with around a million credits ... about the sixth part of what he would have collected if he'd stopped playing crooked and trying to get everything. I doubt the doctor will ever quit kicking himself ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz

... the Mali caste as a whole. Again Sir C. Elliot wrote in the Hoshangabad Settlement Report: "Garden crops are considered as a kind of fancy agriculture and the true cultivator, the Kisan, looks on them with contempt as little peddling matters; what stirs his ambition is a fine large wheat-field eighty or a hundred acres in extent, as flat as a billiard-table and as black as a Gond." Similarly Mr. Low [160] states that in Balaghat the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... been at a standstill since last September. At the Bourse the transactions have been of the most trifling description, much to the disgust of the many thousands who live here by peddling gains and doubtful speculations in this temple of filthy lucre. By a series of decrees payment of rent and of bills of exchange has been deferred from month to month. Most of the wholesale exporting houses have been absolutely closed. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... myself, "here is Common-sense in the shape of a half-witted peddling fellow, blundering into Arcadia, in the shape of a haunted cottage, a woman, and a man. Straightway our Pedler, being Common-sense, misjudges us—as, indeed, would every other common-sense individual the world ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... not like to have fun poked at him. For some time he refused to take the offer seriously, and even when his host insisted that he would enjoy the lark, he expostulated: "Why, the idea is ridiculous! You—Calvin Gray, the financier, peddling jewelry? Ha! Outside of the fact that you wouldn't, couldn't do it, it's not the safest thing in the world to carry a small fortune in stones through ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... in mind," said Peter, "for the day when my patrons get tired of me. I know Rodney will be kind to me directly I take to street peddling or any other thoroughly ill-bred profession. The kind he despises most, I suppose, are my dear Ignorant Rich—the ill-bred but by no means breadless. (That's my own and not very funny, by the way.) Did I tell you, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... "Cheat or be cheated" was the rule of life, as the modern philosopher had said. On the one side were the many dying of want, on the other side the few occupied with poetry and art, writing addresses to flowers, and peddling—in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the lusts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire.... Then where was our refuge? ... The Church was the refuge of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... time ago. I'd just bought a new line of goods. Anyhow, I'm glad it wasn't me. I couldn't afford to lose many five hundred dollar bills," and he laughed frankly. "That's about as much as I make in a year—I mean, altogether," he said, quickly, lest the girls get an exaggerated notion of the peddling business. "I can't make that clear, though I hope to some time," he ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope

... few months back, when the importance of heavenly welfare far exceeded the importance of any conceivable earthly welfare. The fact was that they had no argument. If God took precedence of knowledge and of health, he took precedence of a peddling shop! ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... "If you hadn't been so greedy, you'd have found out what a chunk of land was to these natives before you started peddling it. You'd have found out other things about them, too. You'd have learned that in spite of all their bumbling and fussing and squabbling they're not so dull. You'd have found out that they're marsupials, and that two out of five of them get thrown ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse

... little farm houses that you can see in any of our mountain gaps, where the land produces nothing but grasshoppers and rocks, and the farmers have to get along by raising chickens to keep down the swarms of grasshoppers, and by peddling huckleberries, and they say, but I never saw them at it, by holding the hind legs of the sheep up to let them get their noses between the rocks ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... Yandragno, sir," one of the policemen said. "Industrial Sector Constabulary grabbed him peddling Martian hellweed cigarettes to the girls in a textile mill at Kangabar Equivalent. Captain Jamzar thinks he may have gotten them ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper



Words linked to "Peddling" :   vending, hawking, vendition, peddle



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