Forms: 5 bager, 7 (?) bodger, budger, 5– badger. [See BADGE v.2, and note below.]
One who buys corn and other commodities and carries them elsewhere to sell; an itinerant dealer who acts as a middleman between producer (farmer, fisherman, etc.) and consumer; a cadger, hawker or huckster. Still common in the dialects.
By Act 5 and 6 Edw. VI. c. 14 § 7 Badgers were required to be licensed by the Justices (the origin of the hawker’s licence). Among the commodities in which they are said to have dealt are named corn (especially), fish, butter, and cheese. They were obnoxious to the charge of regrating, and hence the word is in some 17th c. vocabularies, e.g., Robertson’s Phraseol. Gen. (196), explained as ‘an ingrosser, a forebuyer, or forestaller of the market, one that buyeth corn and other provisions beforehand.’
a. 1500. Office of Mayor of Bristol, in E. E. Gilds, 424. The bagers, such as bryngeth whete to towne, as wele in trowys, as otherwyse, by lande and by watir.
1552. Act 5–6 Edw. VI., xiv. § 7. The Buying of any Corn, Fish, Butter, or Cheese, by any such Badger, Lader, Kidder or Carrier, as shall bee assigned and allowed to that office or doing by three Justices of peace.
1562. Act 5 Eliz., xii. Badgers of Corn, and Drovers of Cattle, to be licensed.
1587. Fleming, Contn. Holinshed, III. 588/2. No badger, baker, brewer, or purueior, to buie graine, vntill an houre after the full market begin.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 555. All the inhabitants be as it were a kind of hucksters, or badgers.
1641. Best, Farm. Bks. (1856), 101. The badgers come farre, many of them; whearefore theire desire is to buy soone, that they may be goinge betimes, for feare of beinge nighted.
1674. Ray, N. Countr. Wds., Badger, such as buy Corn, or other Commodities in one place, and carry them to another.
1695. Kennett, Par. Antiq., Gloss. s.v. Cart-body, Badger, Budger, or Bodger, i.e. a carrier or retailer of Bodges or bags of corn.
1788. W. Marshall, E. Yorkshire, Badger, a huckster.
1825. Britton, Beauties of Wiltsh., Badger, a corn-dealer.
1858. Ladies Bever Hollow, II. iv. 68. ‘Our Butter fetches a penny a pound more than other people’s from the badger.’
1863. Atkinson, Whitby Gloss., Badger, a huckster; a man who goes about the country with ass and panniers, to buy up butter, eggs, and fruit, which he will sell at a near market-town; and before shops were common in every village, he dealt in needles, thread, trimmings, and the like, for which he was open to exchange. [Also in the following Glossaries of E.D.S.: Swaledale (Meal-seller), Huddersf., Mid Yorksh., Cumbrld. (Flour or corn-dealer; also pedlar, huckster), Worcester, N. Lancash. (Travelling huckster or dealer, cadger), Lancash. (Keeper of small provision shop).]
[Note. Conjectures as to the derivation, and possible connection with next word, depend greatly upon the original meaning. On the assumption that this was ‘corn-merchant,’ bager, badger, has been identified with obs. F. bladier, ‘a Marchant or Ingrosser of corne,’ Cotgr. (properly Provençal = OF. blaier, blayer); but this is phonetically inadmissible. If, however, we assume bager to represent a ME. *blager, with l unaccountably lost, this might represent an OF. *blaagier, f. blaage (bleage, bladage) harvest, corn-supply, feudal due paid in corn, f. ble, bled in med.L. bladum corn, wheat. (See H. Nicol, Proc. Philol. Soc., 19 Dec., 1879.) But no such links between F. blaage and Eng. bager are found either in F. or Eng.; so that there is positively no evidence connecting badger with any deriv. of F. blé. And indeed a consideration of the whole (46) quotations which we have for the word leads to the conviction that the bager, badger, had no essential connection with corn, any more than the lader, kidder, or carrier, named along with him in the statutes, proclamations and law-books. At present it is most in accordance with the facts to take badger as the agent-noun from BADGE v.1].
