How to Use traveling salesman in a Sentence

traveling salesman

noun
Definition of traveling salesmannext
  • Jules was working as a traveling salesman in Turin when his son was born.
    — Jed Perl, The New York Review of Books, 14 May 2020
  • Worn out from his life on the road as a traveling salesman, the barely awake Gregor Samsa thinks he’s caught a bug.
    — Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 26 Jan. 2018
  • With the assurance of a traveling salesman, DJ leaned across the airplane seat and helped his cousin Hunter, who was 8, click the seatbelt in place.
    — Sam Dolnick, New York Times, 14 Dec. 2022
  • The idea of the book is that a traveling salesman named Signor Bianchi calls home every night to tell his daughter a story.
    — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 9 Oct. 2020
  • The famous play Death of a Salesman explores the moral dilemmas of a traveling salesman.
    — John Horgan, Scientific American, 3 Sep. 2021
  • Mandelbaum is a traveling salesman who has been out of town for a couple of weeks.
    — Caren Schnur Neile, Sun Sentinel, 3 Jan. 2023
  • Gustorf was a traveling salesman and built the home as a tourist attraction.
    — Lainey Seyler, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 27 Mar. 2018
  • His father, John, was a traveling salesman who dealt in hardware and tires.
    — Fortune, 3 Feb. 2020
  • Dennis Weaver is a traveling salesman in the Mojave Desert who passes a tanker truck.
    — Christopher Borrelli, chicagotribune.com, 24 Mar. 2022
  • In Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a traveling salesman reflects on his failed career and his hopes for his sons. 7:30 p.m.
    — Carrie Donovan, Washington Post, 21 Sep. 2017
  • The problem works like this: imagine you’re a traveling salesman flying from city to city selling your wares.
    — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, 27 Dec. 2018
  • His father, also named Frederick, was a traveling salesman who died when the twins were 13, The Telegraph said.
    — New York Times, 15 Jan. 2021
  • And the road rage is palpable and knuckle-clenching as a traveling salesman tries to avoid getting run off the road and killed by a vengeful big rig driver.
    — Brian Truitt, USA TODAY, 9 June 2021
  • His father was a traveling salesman dealing in men’s coats.
    — James R. Hagerty, WSJ, 3 Mar. 2020
  • This Professor Hill seems less a traveling salesman than a song-and-dance man on a second-class national tour.
    — Washington Post, 11 Feb. 2022
  • His father was a traveling salesman of sewing supplies.
    — James R. Hagerty, WSJ, 3 Mar. 2022
  • As a traveling salesman, Loren came home only on weekends.
    — Washington Post, 13 May 2021
  • Because of her mother’s dalliances with a shady traveling salesman selling a bright green elixir, her baby is born green.
    — David Lyman, Cincinnati.com, 16 Sep. 2017
  • Derby Dinner Playhouse presents this classic musical about a traveling salesman who comes to a small town with a plan to sell the town folk on the idea of organizing a boy band.
    — Gege Reed, The Courier-Journal, 2 Aug. 2017
  • Thus, the idea of the traveling salesman Hill swindling the locals into investing in a boys’ marching band, with the intent of skipping town before teaching them a note, held up as well.
    — Thomas Floyd, Washington Post, 29 June 2022
  • The supercomputer is able to solve a traveling salesman problem by comparing the length of all of the possible routes and choosing the shortest.
    — Jennifer Welsh, Discover Magazine, 28 Oct. 2010
  • His father was a traveling salesman and a mechanic, and his mother was a homemaker.
    — New York Times, 3 Feb. 2020
  • The story starts with a man in the wrong key, out of tune with the real world, loading up his traveling salesman’s car every morning, lying on a motel bed every night, watching TV.
    — Jeanette Winterson, New York Times, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Another legend is that of The Leatherman, who is embodied in Brownell’s story as a traveling salesman of French descent.
    — Susan Dunne, Hartford Courant, 21 Apr. 2022
  • Back in 1896, Jacob Frank decided to end his career as a traveling salesman and go into business in Cincinnati.
    — Jeff Suess, The Enquirer, 2 Apr. 2021
  • Like a lot of his songs, this one takes a lighthearted view of domestic complications: A man comes home and discovers his wife has run off with a traveling salesman.
    — Rob Tannenbaum, New York Times, 8 Apr. 2020
  • The 68-year-old former traveling salesman is the owner of the Dixie General Store, one of the places where those who want to remember the Confederacy take their stand and buy its emblems.
    — William Thornton | [email protected], al, 23 June 2020
  • Jacobson declared bankruptcy in 1925, and the debt followed him in his career as a traveling salesman.
    — Timothy Bella, Washington Post, 17 Oct. 2023
  • So 3! is 3 times 2 times 1, or six — the number of permutations for our example traveling salesman.
    — Philip Bump, Washington Post, 20 Dec. 2019
  • The pop-music parodist Weird Al Yankovic acquired his first accordion from a traveling salesman and recorded his first hit in a public bathroom.
    — Times Insider Staff Joohee Yoon, New York Times, 31 Dec. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'traveling salesman.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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