Today's Word "Colporteur"
Published in Vocabulary
colporteur /KOL-por-tehr/ (noun) - A traveling peddler or distributor of literature, especially literature of a religious nature.
"Intrepid colporteurs bore the Bible to every bar and other house of shady character in the city on their quest to vanquish Satan from every den of iniquity they could find."
Today's word is an alteration of Old French "comporteur" from comporter "to conduct, peddle" by analogy with col "neck," from the idea that peddlers carry their wares on trays suspended from straps around their necks. Latin portare "carry" is the origin of our "porter" and "collar" is related to the French word for "neck." Both go back to Latin collum "neck," a word with a rich etymological heritage. The prefixed repetition. The same prefixed variant became "hweogol" in Old English, a word which was later reduced to "wheel." With a suffix -s, it became Russian koleso "wheel" and German Hals "neck." Also akin to Russian and Serbian okolo "around."
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