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What's The Word For...?

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Recycled1

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jun 6, 2008
Messages
3,278
I grew up in a strict, evangelical Baptist family and I'm sure I used to hear my parents use a special word someone, possibly itinerant,who sold/gave away Bibles and religious tracts.
The word sounded something like "collpetter" (No, I'm not mixing it up with 'Culpeper', who I associate with herbal remedies.)
I'm in my 70's , so we're probably talking an out-of date word.
I've googled every possible spelling I can think of, with no success.

Can anyone here help me?
 
Recycled1 said:
I grew up in a strict, evangelical Baptist family and I'm sure I used to hear my parents use a special word someone, possibly itinerant,who sold/gave away Bibles and religious tracts.
The word sounded something like "collpetter" (No, I'm not mixing it up with 'Culpeper', who I associate with herbal remedies.)
I'm in my 70's , so we're probably talking an out-of date word.
I've googled every possible spelling I can think of, with no success.

Can anyone here help me?
Click to expand...
Colportage is the distribution of publications, books, and religious tracts by carriers called "colporteurs" or "colporters". The term does not necessarily refer to religious book peddling.
 
Or:

Coal Porter.JPG

maximus otter
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Souleater said:
Colportage is the distribution of publications, books, and religious tracts by carriers called "colporteurs" or "colporters". The term does not necessarily refer to religious book peddling.
Click to expand...

I happened to come across the word "colporteur" decades ago, when reading about George Borrow (1803 -- 1881), traveller and author, most famous as an enthusiast for the Romani people and his writings about them. Some of his work and travels, undertaken on behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society -- although it seems that he was a genuine Christian, very definitely of the Protestant variety; one may tend to suspect that he did the B&FBS stuff primarily in order to make possible, his lengthy and extensive wanderings and his getting to know thoroughly, the countries where he spent time. His most renowned non-Romani-focused work is The Bible in Spain: arising from his having spent the period 1835 -- 1840 travelling around Spain on behalf of the Society, with copies of the Bible in Spanish, including endeavours at distributing them. (This seems to have been a most uphill task: with Spain a very highly Catholic country, and with the Catholic Church in those times, implacably opposed to their flock's having their own access to the Scriptures.)

I encountered in this connection, the word "colporteur"; which is what Borrow was, when doing his stuff thus. To the best of my recall -- my only meeting with the term, actually in use: it lodged in my memory because of its striking me as an unusual, and rather jolly-sounding, word.
 
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