Flea market

[Rasputin]

All right...so why is it called a flea market? And I'm hoping it's more than just the obvious (which it probably is anyways). It seems a bad marketing ploy to name your shopping area after a parasitic insect no one wants to have on their purchased goods.

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"Give a man a match and he'll be warm for an hour... Set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

[ChrisCTP]

It's where you go to buy fleas. Duh.

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Veni, Vidi, Visa ... I came, I saw, I bought.

[Markxxx]

It is not where you buy fleas....It happens to be where the fleas sell their goods

[TubaDiva]

From the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, ppg. 224-225:

flea marketis an open-air or street market that sells a wide variety of merchandise, most of it secondhand and some of it masquerading as antique. . . The reason for the name is simply that there are so many secondhand articles of all kinds for sale that they are believed to gather fleas.

Sounds like every flea market I've ever been to.

your humble TubaDiva

[tanstaafl]

According to Webster's, it's named after a specific market in France:


Main Entry: flea market
Function: noun
Etymology: translation of French Marché aux Puces, a market in Paris
Date: 1922
: a usually open-air market for secondhand articles and antiques


That being said, I always heard that it came from the fact that it was a "small" market (as opposed to the main town market square) and that "flea" was a reference to the size.

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"You can't run away forever; but there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start." --- Jim Steinman

Dennis Matheson --- Dennis@mountaindiver.com
Hike, Dive, Ski, Climb --- www.mountaindiver.com (http://www.mountaindiver.com)