Regrater

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic term for a dealer who buys provisions in bulk and resells them in the same local market, often at a higher price
2. A historical middleman who purchases foodstuffs or other goods and sells them again nearby, a practice once considered an offense
3. Someone in an older market economy who buys up supplies and retails them locally, especially grain, meat or other provisions

Etymology: "Regrater" is a word that most readers will never have met, and its history is mostly a story about the verb it grew from. "Regrate" came into English from Old French "regrater," meaning to buy up goods in bulk and resell them at a higher price, and the sense was tied to the medieval marketplace, where dealers who cornered supplies of food were resented as profiteers. The noun "regrater" simply names the person who does this, with the English agent suffix "-er" added to the verb. The word was therefore a term of commercial suspicion long before it meant a plain local trader. Its meaning narrowed over the centuries to a small-scale food reseller, the middleman who buys produce and sells it on, which is the sense recorded for it today. Because "regrate" and its noun were folded into the trade laws of earlier England, the word appears mainly in legal and historical writing rather than everyday speech.