Etymologically speaking, the word “brokier” derived from Old North French “Brokeor,” which in turn derived from the verb brokier “to broach”; hence the Old Frerch noun meant, “one who broaches or tops a cask to draw off the liquor.” Broker was first used in English to designate a petty dealer in secondhand goods or a pawn broker. Petty is defined as small in nature, mean and ungenerous, inferior; so a broker could be said to have been a small, mean and ungenerous dealer in secondhand goods. This might get the ethical, professionolly oriented real estate broker of today somewhat perturbed, did he not know that the doctors and the lawyers have some odd ancestors in the earlier history of their respective professions. His concern is not so much what word study shows a broker to have once been as what an analysis of present practices will show the average broker now to be.
—Calif. Real Estate Bulletin
This article came from the March 1970-Vol1-1 edition of the bulletin.