(Last Updated On: July 4, 2023)
Getting things second-hand is a pretty good way to get stuff you like, mostly because it’s probably going to be cheaper. Or super expensive if they don’t make the thing you wanted anymore, which is a very different kind of pain. But since buying stuff second-hand is an intuitive practice, it only makes sense for second-hand sellers to all get together every now and then to show off their wares with all that flea market jazz. But why is it called a flea market?
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We Maybe Got it from the French
Second hand markets long predate any version of the term “flea market.” The idea of “getting things used from someone else” probably popped up immediately after the idea of “getting things from someone else.” This probably seems pretty intuitive, as the term didn’t begin gaining traction in English until the 1960s.
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While the origins of “flea market” are often debated, there are a handful of theories people seem to consider acceptable. One of which is that English speakers picked up “flea market” from the French marché aux puces—fittingly translating to “market with fleas.” The French flea markets were pretty much the same; they sold previously owned items. Allegedly they would contain fleas, thus the name “market with fleas.” The moniker marché aux puces appears to have first been attributed to Paris in 1860. While “flea market” didn’t seem to be entering the popular English lexicon until the 1960s-1970s, early uses of it date back to the late 1800s.
Etymology and Flies
Honestly, at this point a post about “why are words the way they are” without a discussion of etymology is just incomplete.
Anyway, let’s look at the etymology of the word “flea.” In English, it’s probably related to the word Old English fleon, which means “to flee.” Paris has been subject to some reconstruction and replanning, which forced merchants hosting their second-hand markets to move to around—or otherwise flee. How “flee” and “flea” became synonymous afterwards is beyond us, though.
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Another theory rises from the Fly Market, located in New York city from 1699 through to the early 1800s. While flea markets may be named for fleas, the Fly Market wasn’t named for houseflies. At the time the Fly Market was founded, New York was primarily Dutch, and they called it the Vly Market—referring to “valley.” But phonetically, it sounded like “Fly Market,” but where we go from flies to fleas is again unclear from the Fly Market.
See if you know your market trends here.
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Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
