Definition of "costermonger"
costermonger
noun
plural costermongers
(Britain) A trader who sells fruit and vegetables from a cart or barrow in the street.
Quotations
I cannot tell, vertue is of ſo little regard in theſe coſtar-mongers times, that true valour is turnd berod […]
c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Second Part of Henrie the Fourth, […], quarto edition, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise, and William Aspley, published 1600, [Act I, scene ii]
The Saint Monday Gemmen held their diversions on the 18th, near Clay-hill, which consisted of a pugilistic exhibition between G. Wilkie, a coster-monger, and Jeffery Smith, a professor, but little calculated to astonish the spectators at his professional skill. The battle was for ten guineas; and, after a contest of about forty minutes, in which the combatants were decently feaked, and the head of Jeffery was a good deal disfigured, he resigned the contest, and the coster-monger was carried to Westminster in triumph, [...]
1808 January 18, “Sporting Intelligence”, in The Sporting Magazine, or Monthly Calendar, of the Transactions of the Turf, the Chase, and Every Other Diversion Interesting to the Man of Pleasure, Enterprize, & Spirit, volume XXXI, number 184, London: Printed for J. Wheble, 18, Warwick Square, page 208
We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new adventures, except encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger’s cart, who suggested painful associations to my aunt.
1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 23, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850
The twilight was still in the dusky skies; the walking took her nearly always over pieces of wrapping paper and banana peels, and the sawdust and detritus that fell from the costermongers’ stalls, lining all the roadways.
1913, Ford Madox Ford, chapter 7, in Mr. Fleight, London: Howard Latimer, page 93