Middle English word dating back to 1300–50; see origin at hawk 1, -ing 1
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Six months on there are "no more, but no less" people out at night, said one young woman hawking sachets of hangover remedy.
From Barron's • Jun. 12, 2026
And they raised enormous piles of cash—sometimes in the hundreds of millions of dollars—in a way that made them seem more like tech startups than companies hawking retail consumer goods.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 23, 2026
Kristi Noem was shown selling handheld vacuums on a home shopping network while Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth were hawking products on their own podcast.
From Salon • May 17, 2026
But he was managing to put a noticeable distance between himself and the news No 10 had been hawking their former director of communications Lord Doyle for a job as an ambassador.
From BBC • Apr. 24, 2026
A newspaper boy was on the corner hawking his wares.
From "The Detective's Assistant" by Kate Hannigan
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.
