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Pronunciation varies by accent · noun
(UK, Ireland) A vendor who sells fruit and vegetables from a cart or barrow in the street..
1889, Oscar Wilde, “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” Chapter 1, in Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, He was an extraordinary old aristocrat, who swore like a costermonger, and had the manners of a farmer.
I cannot tell, vertue is of ſo little regard in theſe coſtar-mongers times, that true valour is turnd berod […]
The Saint Monday Gemmen held their diversions on the 18th, near Clay-hill, which consisted of a pugilistic exhibition between G. Wilkie, a coster-monger, and Jeffery Smith, a professor, but little calculated to astonish the spectators at his professional skill. The battle was for ten guineas; and, after a contest of about forty minutes, in which the combatants were decently feaked, and the head of Jeffery was a good deal disfigured, he resigned the contest, and the coster-monger was carried to Westminster in triumph, [...]
We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new adventures, except encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger’s cart, who suggested painful associations to my aunt.
He had loved too well to imagine himself a glorious racehorse, and now he was condemned to toil without honour like a costermonger’s donkey.
The twilight was still in the dusky skies; the walking took her nearly always over pieces of wrapping paper and banana peels, and the sawdust and detritus that fell from the costermongers’ stalls, lining all the roadways.
In more recent times it is recorded that among the London costermongers of the Victorian age a common oath, probably misunderstood or not understood at all, was, So help me testes!
Use costermonger when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Costermonger means (UK, Ireland) A vendor who sells fruit and vegetables from a cart or barrow in the street..
Common synonyms include fruitmonger, fruitseller, fruiterer, coster.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
1889, Oscar Wilde, “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” Chapter 1, in Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, He was an extraordinary old aristocrat, who swore like a costermonger, and had the manners of a farmer.
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