[F. agent-n. f. colporter, app. f. col neck + porter to carry: see Littré.] A hawker of books, newspapers, etc., esp. (in English use) one employed by a society to travel about and sell or distribute Bibles and religious writings.
1796. Burney, Metastasio, III. 393. An itinerant German Colporteur, or book pedlar.
1825. New Monthly Mag., XIV. 64. The hawkers of fly-sheets … like the colporteurs of Paris.
1846. Worcester, Colporter, a hawker; a pedler; a pedler of books.
1862. Brit. Workman, 1 June. The Colporteurs of the Religious Tract and Book Society of Scotland.
1865. Parkman, Fr. & Eng. in N. Amer. (1880), 17. Intrepid Colporteurs bore the Bible to city, hamlet and castle.
