My trafficker arranged my passport, visa and airline ticket before I left, then took my documents when I arrived.
Could any trafficker in human flesh ask for greater latitude?
The dealer in fire-arms might have plead as the trafficker in poison does: This is my business.
I would have preferred by far the keeper's lash to the jovial loquacity of this trafficker in human flesh.
The unregenerate Teuton was a pirate and a plunderer; the settled Saxon became an oversea trader and trafficker.
Wherein does this plea differ from that of the trafficker in ardent spirits?
There is, indeed, something of the greatness of Falstaff in this trafficker of dead “souls.”
Everywhere they thus laid aside the venerated character of a chief to put on the odious character of a trafficker.
Thus the State places itself before the world as a trafficker in womens bodies for the vilest purposes.
There was a merchant, a trafficker in gold, called Kichiji of the Third Ward.
c.1500, "trade, commerce," from Middle French trafique (mid-15c.), from Italian traffico (early 14c.), from trafficare "carry on trade," of uncertain origin, perhaps from a Vulgar Latin *transfricare "to rub across" (from Latin trans- "across" + fricare "to rub"), with the original sense of the Italian verb being "touch repeatedly, handle."
Or the second element may be an unexplained alteration of Latin facere "to make, do." Klein suggests ultimate derivation of the Italian word from Arabic tafriq "distribution." Meaning "people and vehicles coming and going" first recorded 1825. Traffic jam is 1917, ousting earlier traffic block (1895).
1540s, from traffic (n.) and preserving the original commercial sense. Related: Trafficked; trafficking. The -k- is inserted to preserve the "k" sound of -c- before a suffix beginning in -i-, -y-, or -e- (cf. picnic/picnicking, panic/panicky, shellac/shellacked).