Got an e-mail this morning urging me to attend a flea market being held to raise money for some charity. Wonder why these things are called “flea” markets? They don’t sell fleas. Of course you could make the same argument for farmers markets, slave markets, etc. You can’t buy farmers or slaves at these places.
But other “markets” make a little more sense to me… farmers markets sell things produced by farmers and slave markets, while at one time probably did sell slaves, the term came to mean a place to buy things made by, or produced by slaves.
But flea market seems to be a strange name — so — it calls for some extensive research on my part. Unfortunately, like a lot of other subjects of my extensive research, the origin of the term flea market doesn’t have one clear-cut answer.
The flea market term is usually applied to a type of bazar that rents or provides space to people who want to sell or barter merchandise. Some are seasonal and they may be held indoors in places like a warehouse or school gymnasium or maybe outdoors in a field or parking lot. People usually sell used “stuff,” cheap items, collectibles or antiques, etc. – you can often find baked goods and fresh produce.
The most popular theory for the flea market moniker is that it comes from the French marchė aux puces, a name originally given to a market in Paris which specialized in shabby second-hand goods of the kind that might contain fleas.
Anyhow lots of these types of events are popular today… while garage sales or yard sales usually only involve one, or just a few, sellers, a flea market usually has a fairly large number of “vendors” and one can find pretty much anything for sale. Seems like people are becoming obsessed about buying things either on-line or at some sort of a craft fair, yard sale, or flea market… Someone said it doesn’t matter to criminals if the event is called a gun show or a flea market — if they can buy guns.
Not that I’d want to, but if I did, I have no idea where I would go to buy fleas. And if I did find a place, how do they sell them? Individually? By weight? By the dozen? I suppose that if I bought 144 fleas and put them in a box that would be “gross.”
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