dealer

noun

DEE-ler/ˈdilɚ/UKDEE-luh/ˈdiːlə(ɹ)/

5 meanings of dealer

1
nouncountable
A person whose business is buying and selling goods, especially cars, often acting as a go-between for buyers and sellers.
The antique dealer traveled to estate sales looking for rare furniture.
Authorized dealers carry parts that independent garages cannot order.
Similarsalesman, peddler
2
nouncountable
The player or employee who distributes the cards to participants in a card game.
At the casino, the dealer flipped over the final community card.
Each hand, a new dealer shuffled and dealt the deck.
Similarcroupier
3
nouncountable
A person who sells illegal drugs, typically as part of an illicit trade.
The dealer was caught with a large quantity of heroin.
Street dealers often work for larger trafficking networks.
Similarpeddler
Note
Context alone can carry this meaning, with no mention of drugs. In Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger Song" (1967), a line about the dealers among the men a woman has known, who claim to have given up the trade, leaves that trade unnamed, and the bare verb dealing follows the noun. Peddler overlaps with this sense, but it also fits the trader in goods, so the surrounding sentence decides which one is meant.
4
nouncountable
A person or firm that buys and sells stocks, bonds, or other securities for its own account, rather than as a broker acting for clients.
The dealer made a market in several thinly traded bonds.
Registered dealers must report large transactions to regulators.
Similartrader
5
nouncountable
A person who deals out or metes out something, of whatever kind.
In the final round the champion turned into a relentless dealer of blows.
She became known as a fair dealer of praise and blame alike.
Similardispenser
Note
The broadest sense, and the one nearest the plain verb: Old English dǣlere, simply deal plus -er, with cognates in Dutch deler and German Teiler. Used this way, the word needs an of-phrase to say what is handed out. Kate Stanley's Practices of Surprise in American Literature after Emerson (2018) turns a man dealt a decisive blow into "a vengeful dealer of blows," playing the passive verb against the noun.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English delare, from Old English dǣlere, formed from 'deal' plus the suffix '-er'. It is related to Dutch deler, German Teiler, and Swedish delare.