Wholesaler

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A business that sells goods in large quantities to various merchants for the purpose of resale to end consumers
2. An organization that purchases inventory in bulk from producers and supplies it to retailers for further distribution and sale
3. A distributor that acquires products in significant volumes from manufacturers to supply them to smaller retail businesses for resale purposes

Etymology: A wholesaler is, quite literally, a "wholesale" person: the noun is simply "wholesale" with the agent suffix "-er" attached. The whole idea behind "wholesale" is the whole lot, a single transaction covering a quantity rather than a single item, and the "-er" marks the person who does this trading. The suffix has a longer pedigree than the compound itself. The "-er" ending descends from Latin "-arius", which denoted a person connected with a trade or occupation, and it travelled through Proto-Germanic and Old English (as "-ere") into Middle English. Along the way, Old French also had its own "-ier" form, which fed into the English ending, so the suffix was a familiar tool long before anyone combined it with "wholesale".

Synonyms: distributor, supplier, merchant, jobber, broker

Antonyms: retailer, customer, consumer, buyer, shopper