Wind up merchant

[Drusilla]

I've just used this phrase on this site and know what it means (roughly), but where does it come from?

[logman]

It could be a guy who sells cheap dodgey watches in pubs, which go kaput by boxing day

[jno]

I would guess it comes from things you wind up and let go - a watch perhaps or kids' toys. You 'wind someone up' in similar fashion - do something that you know will get them started (eg making them angry) and then stand back and let them do it... and a merchant would just suggest (exaggeratedly) that they wind people up all the time for a living...

[snapdarlich]

You starting Dru?

[Quizmonster]

One meaning of 'merchant' has been just a 'chap' since the 1500s, as in 'speed merchant'...ie a man who likes to drive fast. It doesn't really have much to do with selling anything in this usage.
'Wind up' in the sense used here...ie provoking someone into a misunderstanding as a practical joke...is much more recent, no written record of it existing earlier than the 1980s.

[jno]

I've heard the 1500s were full of speed merchants QM, racing their carts up and down Eastcheap and terrifying widows and orphans.

[Grunty]

Can't speak for the 1500s jno, but I have a 100-year old cutting of someone charged with driving a cart "wantonly and furiously" at nearly 20 m.p.h.

[Quizmonster]

I meant, of course, that the meaning rather than the example dated to the 16th century, J! In fact, the earliest one recorded reads (modernised): "These merchants crack so much of themselves that I may also somewhat glory of myself."
As Grunty suggests, however, I've no doubt but that - even 'way back then - there were horsemen, for example, who scared ordinary punters whilst galloping through town. Old Will Shakespeare himself might have had occasion to exclaim to a companion in Stratford market-place: "Beware, good Launcelot, else yon speed merchant wilt have thee flatten�d!"