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travelling salesman

British  

noun

  1. Also called: commercial traveller.   traveller.  a salesman who travels within an assigned territory in order to sell merchandise or to solicit orders for the commercial enterprise he represents by direct personal contact with customers and potential customers

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

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A travelling salesman by day, Williams fulfilled his racing ambitions at the weekend and, aged just 24, he launched his own team, Frank Williams Racing Cars.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 28, 2021

However, he felt obliged to follow a more responsible path after the death of his father, a travelling salesman.

From The Guardian • Nov. 16, 2019

A travelling salesman awakens one morning, transformed into an insect.

From Washington Post • Jun. 1, 2017

Hancock displays the hardscrabble lot of the travelling salesman, with phone calls to the home office made at parking-lot pay phones and lonely nights in shabby hotels.

From The New Yorker • Jan. 20, 2017

“You are Cyrus Bethman Hardman, United States subject, forty-one years of age, travelling salesman for typewriting ribbons?”

From "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie

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