spruik
To promote a thing or idea to another person, usually informally.
transitive
There was no spruiking or showmanship, no flash shirts or ten-gallon hats.
Where it comes from
Unknown, likely Germanic. Compare Dutch spraak (“speech”), spreek (“speak”), spreuk (“saying”), sprook (“a story, fiction, tale, or false idea”). First recorded in the late 1890s and early 1900s, suggesting a possible derivation from Afrikaans (i.e. brought back by soldiers returning from the Boer War). With the exception of a few early uses of sprook, the word's spelling has been fixed since it first entered the language. The uncommon ⟨ui⟩ digraph provides further evidence for an Afrikaans or Dutch origin.
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry spruik (CC BY-SA 4.0).