Poulter

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who buys, sells or prepares birds such as chickens, ducks and geese for food
2. A tradesman who deals in domestic fowl and game birds, selling them as meat to customers
3. Someone whose trade is supplying and dressing poultry for the market or for household cooks

Etymology: A poulter is a dealer in poultry: someone who buys and sells fowl. The trade name came into English from Old French "pouletier", a word built on "poulet", meaning "fowl" or young chicken. Middle English took it up as "pulter", and the modern spelling kept the French-derived shape while the English word "poult" (a young domestic fowl) sits in the same family. The surface analysis that makes it look like "poult" plus the agent suffix "-er" is tempting, and it matches the English word's form closely. But the direct route runs through French, so the ending is a French agent suffix attached to a French stem, not an English suffix added to an English word. The two words share a root in spirit, not in the simple way the spelling suggests.

Synonyms: poulterer