Other forms: dealers
A dealer is somebody who buys and sells a particular kind of thing — an antiques dealer, a car dealer, an art dealer. The word implies a trade rather than an occasional sale.
Used with no qualifier it usually means a drug dealer, which is worth knowing before using it loosely. In card games the dealer is the person who deals, and the role rotates. In finance a dealer trades on their own account, as against a broker, who trades for somebody else. The word is built transparently from deal plus -er, and the related noun dealership means a business licensed to sell one manufacturer's cars.
1noundealerSomebody whose business is buying and selling a particular thing.
“The dealer offered half what it was worth.”
2nounhandsThe person who hands out the cards in a game.
“The dealer takes the last two cards.”
3nounillegalSomebody who sells illegal drugs.
“The dealer was arrested outside the flats.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
dealer is a person who buys and sells.
Old English daelan meant to divide or share out, from dael, a part — the same root as deal and dole. A dealer was originally somebody who divided things up, and dealing cards is the oldest surviving sense of that.
Middle English
delare
English, today
dealer
From Middle English delare. From Middle English delare, from Old English dǣlere, from Proto-West Germanic. by surface analysis, deal + -er. Cognate with stq Deeler, West Frisian dieler, Dutch deler, German Teiler, Swedish delare.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA