[f. TRAFFIC v. + -ER1.]
1. One who is engaged in traffic or trade; a trader, merchant, dealer.
1580. Reg. Privy Council Scot., III. 327. Divers … honest trafficquers of this cuntrie.
1615. trans. De Monfart’s Surv. E. Indies, 22. They are swartie, and great Traffickers.
a. 1727. Newton, Observ. Coin (1730), 10. Traffickers in money will get above 6 per Cent by sending Gold to Spain.
1833. Ht. Martineau, Charmed Sea, v. The traffickers were exchanging their goods laboriously.
1863. Geo. Eliot, Romola, iii. An itinerant trafficker in broken glass and rags.
b. With opprobrious force; cf. TRAFFIC sb. 2 d.
a. 1785. Glover, Athenaid, XIII. Poems (1810), 124/2. Let these to some fell traficker in slaves Be sold.
1839. G. P. R. James, Louis XIV., IV. 50. These traffickers in poison seem to have been seized with a sort of madness.
1859. Anti-Slavery Bugle, 8 Jan., 2/1. The exposure of two mothers and their offspring upon the auction block must have afforded rare fun to the traffickers in human flesh.
1869. Echo, 28 Aug. Practices familiar to many generations of hardened traffickers in votes.
2. One who carries on an underhand or improper traffic (esp. between other parties); a go-between, a negotiator; an intriguer; a schemer.
1570. in Calr. Scott. Pap. (1903), III. 384. Thome Bischop wes ye first trafficquar betuix ye bischop of Ros and ye said Jobnne.
1687. Royal Proclam., in Lond. Gaz., No. 2221/4. For being Papists, Jesuits, or Traffickers, for bearing, or saying of Mass.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul, I. 561. Lest any should say that be too, like the mass of traffickers around him, did but seek his own gain.
1893. Stevenson, Catriona, ix. 96. The whole clan of old Jacobite spies and traffickers.
