vendor
Americannoun
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law a person who sells something, esp real property
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another name for vending machine
Usage
What is a vendor? A vendor is a person or business that sells something, as in The school lunch really improved after it changed food vendors. A vendor is also a machine that dispenses items after you put money into it. It’s more often called a vending machine. Example: The vendor told me that the box has a scratch, so she’s selling it cheap.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of vendor
1585–95; < Anglo-French vendo ( u ) r < Latin venditor. See vend, -or 2
Explanation
If you are a vendor, it means you’re a person selling something, whether it’s hot dogs from a food cart or computer software for a tech company. The word vendor comes from the Latin word vendere, meaning “to sell.” Vendor is a name for people who sell things on the street, such as a hot dog vendor, but it can describe those who sell any kind of goods or services, especially a specialized product. A store at the mall isn't usually called a vendor, but you could use the word to describe the person or group that supplies the store with special products or services.
Vocabulary lists containing vendor
100 SAT Words Beginning with "V"
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The Lemonade War
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The Color of My Words
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The chili dog vendor, which has been at the corner of La Brea and Melrose for 80 years, is set to open its first location in Japan at the end of this year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
Investors have been concerned about Workday’s monetization prospects and its ability to maintain subscription growth in the face of AI-native vendor competition and decreasing company headcounts.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 13, 2026
Street vendor Maribel Verano, 46, is desperately searching for her missing mother and sister.
From Barron's ● Aug. 11, 2026
Meta said the tests were conducted by Irregular, an AI security vendor, which notified it about the breach.
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026
She studies her handful of unfamiliar coins, then holds all of them out to the vendor.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
Pereira's worst affected neighborhoods were also its most impoverished, with homeless people, Venezuelan migrants and street vendors in precarious situations bearing the brunt of the impact.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
Businesses divided spending between internal efforts like hiring quantum talent and external efforts such as developing use cases with vendors and paying to experiment with quantum computers in the cloud.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Beside vendors selling flags, university student Pirooz Mirzaie said the government has brought security, infrastructure projects and "plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs".
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
Parsons said Big Issue teams were working to support vendors and had been handing out sunscreen, caps and water bottles.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2026
Within minutes, he had spotted a young soldier parading among the new vendors with his chin in the sky.
From "The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams" by Daniel Nayeri
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
