Vinour

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic term for a person who buys, sells, or stores wine as a trade
2. A dealer in wine, an obsolete word for a merchant who sold wine to customers
3. Old-fashioned name for a vintner, meaning someone whose business is selling wine

Etymology: In Latin, "vinitor" meant a vine-dresser or grower, someone who tended vineyards, not someone who sold wine. The word passed into Anglo-French and then Middle English as "vinour," and English speakers came to use it for the man who sold the wine that the vineyard produced. The shift from cultivating the vine to trading its product is the central change in the word's history. English already had a close relative in "vintner," which came from a different Latin source, "vinetarius," derived from "vinetum," meaning vineyard. Both words grew from the Latin for wine, "vinum," through separate routes, so they ended up as near-relatives that shared a sense of trade. "Vinour" fell out of use, and "vintner" survived as the standard term for a wine merchant.

Synonyms: vintner