Salesman
nounA man whose job is to sell goods or services, especially in person.
How to spell salesman
8 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce salesman
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does salesman mean?
- nounA man whose job is to sell goods or services, especially in person.
Salesman in a sentence
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The car salesman walked us through the financing options.
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As a travelling salesman, he covered three counties every week.
Where does salesman come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a transparent English compound joining 'sales' to 'man', and both halves are deeply native. The first element traces to the Old English noun 'sala', meaning the act of selling, which in turn comes from the verb 'sellan', 'to give' or 'to hand over'; in older English you could 'sell' something simply by giving it, and the narrower sense of exchanging goods for money came later. The second element, 'man', is among the oldest words in the language, an Old English term originally meaning a human being of either sex before it narrowed to the modern adult male sense. The full compound 'salesman' appears in English by the early 1500s to name a person whose trade is selling goods. The internal 's' often trips writers because it represents the plural-style linking element 'sales' rather than a possessive, so there is no apostrophe.
How the word is built
- sales (plural of sale, from sell)
- man (a male person)
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