Note 175 — III

I have included ‘huckster’, as will be observed, in this list. I certainly cannot produce any passage in which it is employed as the female pedlar. We have only, however, to keep in mind the existence of the verb ‘to huck’, in the sense of to peddle (it is used by Bishop Andrews), and at the same time not to let the present spelling of ‘hawker’ mislead us, and we shall confidently recognize ‘hucker’ (the German ‘höker’ or ‘höcker’), in hawker, that is, the man who ‘hucks’, ‘hawks’, or peddles, as in ‘huckster’ the female who does the same. When therefore Howell and others employ ‘hucksteress’, they fall into the same barbarous excess of expression, whereof we are all guilty, when we use ‘seamstress’ and ‘songstress’.—The note stood thus in the third edition. Since that was published, I have met in the Nominale referred to p. 155, the following, “hæc auxiatrix, a hukster”. [Huckster, xiii. cent. huccster, it may be noted is an older word in the language than hukker (hucker) and to huck, both first appearing in the xiv. cent. N.E.D.]