Wholesalers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Commercial entities that buy products in significant quantities to sell them to retailers or other sellers
2. Enterprises that purchase large volumes of products from manufacturers or suppliers and distribute them to retail stores or businesses
3. Companies engaged in buying products in bulk to sell them in smaller amounts to retailers or other organizations

Etymology: "Wholesaler" is a plain formation: the noun "wholesale" with the agent suffix "-er", meaning someone who does wholesale trade. The suffix itself has a long pedigree, arriving through Old French "-ier" from Latin "-arius", a common ending for people tied to a trade or occupation, and it is the same ending that gives English "butcher" and "baker" in their older forms. The first half, "wholesale", is the more revealing part. It came into English as a phrase, "by wholesale," meaning "in bulk," from "whole" plus "sale," the whole lot sold together rather than piece by piece. The trade term that ran in the other direction, "retail," also developed from the idea of cutting goods into small pieces, so the two words describe opposite ends of the same transaction.

Synonyms: distributors, suppliers, vendors, retailers, dealers