Telemarketer

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A professional who uses phone communication to reach potential clients for the purpose of promoting and selling products or services
2. An individual who engages in direct outreach via phone calls to potential customers with the aim of advertising and selling various products or services
3. A person who conducts phone calls to engage and persuade potential buyers about different offerings or services in a business context

Etymology: The surprise here is how little the word's parts have to do with each other in age. "Tele-" comes from Ancient Greek "têle", meaning "far off" or "at a distance", a root that ultimately reaches back to the same prehistoric stem that gave rise to the Greek word for distance-related ideas. It was a fragment long before it was a word in its own right: Greeks used it in compounds, and English later borrowed it as a prefix for things that work across a distance, such as telephone, telegraph and television. "Marketer" is a far more ordinary English formation, built from "market" plus the agent suffix "-er" to name someone who markets. Joining the two gave "telemarketer", a plain compound that describes exactly what the job involves: marketing at a distance, over the phone. The word is a modern coinage made from older parts, not an ancient term, and its meaning comes straight from its two halves.

Synonyms: salesperson, caller, marketer