Purveyors

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Those who supply goods or services to others, often in a commercial context
2. individuals or entities that provide or disseminate information or resources
3. people engaged in the business of distributing products or offering particular services

Etymology: Long before it described a butcher's shop, "purveyor" meant someone who went ahead to prepare the way. It comes from Old French "porveoir," "to provide, furnish, procure," which descends from Latin "providere," literally "to see before." The Latin verb combines "pro-," meaning "before, forward," with "videre," "to see," so the same idea of foresight that underlies "provide" also sits inside "purvey." The English word, borrowed from Anglo-Norman "purveour" and Middle French forms, appeared in Middle English with a wide range of roles. A purveyor could be a steward in charge of a household's provisions, a military or city official who procured supplies, or an overseer, and the word could even be used figuratively for someone who gathered things greedily. Over time the official and military senses faded, leaving the modern sense of a supplier of goods. Purveyor is a doublet of "proveditor" and "provedore," words that entered English through the same Latin source by different routes.

Synonyms: suppliers, vendors, distributors

Antonyms: consumers, buyers