Other forms: salesmen
A salesman is a man whose job is persuading people to buy. A car salesman, a travelling salesman, the salesman called.
Salesperson and sales representative have largely replaced it in job titles. Death of a Salesman made the figure a symbol of a whole way of living. The travelling salesman problem is a famous puzzle in mathematics about the shortest route round many towns.
1nounsalesmanA man whose job is persuading people to buy.
“The salesman tried hard to persuade us to buy the more expensive car.”
salesman is a job.
Proto-Indo-European
*mon-
Middle English
man
English
man
English, today
salesman
From sales + -man. man comes from Middle English man. From Middle English man, from Old English mann (“human being, person, man”), from Proto-West Germanic mann, from Proto-Germanic mann- (“man”), from Proto-Indo-European mon- (“human being, man”). a doublet of mann and Manu. 1
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA