scalper
noun
Simple meaning
A person on an open outcry exchange trading floor who buys and sells rapidly for his or her own account.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
skalperSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈskælpɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
uscanada
One who scalps tickets to popular entertainment events: buying them in advance and then selling them (e.g. online or just outside the venue of the event), often at inflated prices.
by extension
One who scalps any other item with limited availability.
finance
A person on an open outcry exchange trading floor who buys and sells rapidly for his or her own account, aiming to buy from a seller and a little later sell to a buyer, making a small profit from the difference (roughly the amount of the bid/offer spread, or less).
One who scalps, or removes the scalp of another.
A machine for removing the ends of grain, such as wheat or rye, or for separating the different grades of broken wheat, semolina, etc.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: One who scalps tickets to popular entertainment events: buying them in advance and then selling them (e.g. online or just outside the venue of the event), often at inflated prices.
Used this way, scalper is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use scalper
- “He got theater tickets through a scalper.”noun
Share your sentence
Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The skin that covers the top of the head.
Use This Word
See how this word sounds in a real sentence.
Ask Vocabaura
Understand the word your way.
What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
Use it yourself
Knowing “scalper” starts when you use it. Pick a next step, all free.
Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.