huckster

Hawkers, peddlers, and hucksters have been selling things out of the back of wagons, in narrow alleys, and on the fringes of towns for years (though nowadays, they're more likely to plug their wares on television or the Internet). Of those three words-"hawker," "peddler," or "huckster"-the one that has been around the longest in English is "huckster." It has been with us for over 800 years, and it derives from the Middle Dutch word hokester, which in turn comes from the verb hoeken, meaning "to peddle." "Peddler" (or "pedlar") was first attested in the 14th century, and this sense of "hawker" has only been appearing in English texts since the early 1500s.