British dated term for a travelling salesman — someone who criss-crossed the country by train or car, case of samples in hand, charming shop owners and buyers into placing orders. The phrase carries a vaguely Dickensian atmosphere of smoky railway carriages and dodgy boarding-house dinners. While the job still exists under flashier titles like 'field sales rep', commercial traveller belongs to an earlier, more buttoned-up era of British commerce.
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UK and Irish slang — Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Brummie, Welsh, West Country, plus Irish English. Centuries of regional dialects feeding into modern British and Irish street talk.
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My grandfather spent thirty years as a commercial traveller, covering the whole of the Midlands for a textile firm.
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(British, dated) Travelling salesman.
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