colportage · noun — the distribution or selling of publications via carriers, particularly devotional literature. It carries an Arena rating of 1390, earned across 76 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, colportage ranks #1,213 of 17,167 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #3,572 of 17,197 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #3,577 of 17,195 for Most Exacting Words, #4,467 of 17,180 for Most Ingenious Words.
Why “colportage” is a great word
COLPORTAGE — [Noun] The itinerant distribution or selling of publications, especially religious tracts, by carriers. From French colportage, from colporter (to peddle), itself from Old French comporter (to carry) or from porter à col (to carry on one's neck). First attested in English in the 1840s. Unlike “bookselling,” which implies a fixed, silent shop, or “canvassing,” which seeks opinion or subscription, colportage is a mission of movement and offer. It is the weight of a satchel cutting into a shoulder on a country lane, the hopeful knock on a lonely farmhouse door, and the specific, weathered feel of a pamphlet passed from a stranger’s hand—a transaction less of commerce than of solitary, persistent faith in the printed word to reach where churches could not.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
1840s, from French colportage, from colporteur (1723).
noun
- The distribution or selling of publications via carriers, particularly devotional literature.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
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