sell
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]From Middle English sellen, from Old English sellan (“give; give up for money”), from Proto-West Germanic *salljan, from Proto-Germanic *saljaną, from Proto-Indo-European *selh₁-. Compare Danish sælge, Swedish sälja, Icelandic selja.
Verb
[edit]sell (third-person singular simple present sells, present participle selling, simple past and past participle sold)
- (transitive, ditransitive, intransitive) To transfer goods or provide services in exchange for money.
- Synonyms: peddle, vend
- She sold her old car very quickly.
- I'll sell you three books for a hundred dollars.
- Sorry, I'm not prepared to sell.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 19:21:
- If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.
- 2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:
- No sooner has a [synthetic] drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one. These “legal highs” are sold for the few months it takes the authorities to identify and ban them, and then the cycle begins again.
- (ergative) To be sold.
- This old stock will never sell.
- The corn sold for a good price.
- (transitive) To promote a product or service.
- 2016, “The Fetal Kick Catalyst”, in The Big Bang Theory:
- Howard: You're gonna feel terrible when I'm in a wheelchair. Which, by the way, would fit easily in the back of this award-winning minivan.
Bernadette: Fine, we'll go to the E.R. Just stop selling me on the van.
Howard: You're right. It sells itself.
- (transitive) To promote a particular viewpoint.
- My boss is very old-fashioned and I'm having a lot of trouble selling the idea of working at home occasionally.
- (transitive) To betray for money or other things.
- (transitive, slang) To trick, cheat, or manipulate someone.
- 1605 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, Ben: Ionson His Volpone or The Foxe, [London]: […] [George Eld] for Thomas Thorppe, published 1607, →OCLC, (please specify the Internet Archive page):
- Then weaues
Other crosse-plots
New tricks for safety, are sought;
They thriue: When, bold,
Each tempt's th'other againe, and all are sold.
- 1884, Mark Twain, chapter XXIII, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
- House was jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the same way.
- 2011 January 12, Saj Chowdhury, “Blackpool 2-1 Liverpool”, in BBC:
- Raul Meireles was the victim of the home side's hustling on this occasion giving the ball away to the impressive David Vaughan who slipped in Taylor-Fletcher. The striker sold Daniel Agger with the best dummy of the night before placing his shot past keeper Pepe Reina.
- (transitive, professional wrestling, slang) To pretend that an opponent's blows or maneuvers are causing legitimate injury; to act.
- (Australia, slang, intransitive) To throw under the bus; to let down one's own team in an endeavour, especially in a sport or a game.
- He's selling!
- He really sold in that match.
Antonyms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]- buy low, sell high
- buy when it snows(,/ and) sell when it goes
- cold sell
- cost of goods sold
- cross-sell
- don't sell the skin till you have caught the bear
- hand-sell
- hard-sell
- I have a bridge to sell you
- long sell
- mis-sell
- no-sell
- panic sell
- price to sell
- proverbs should be sold in pairs
- resell
- sell against the box
- sell away
- sell bargains
- sell-by date
- sell by the candle
- sell dearly
- sell down, sell down the river
- sell freezers to Eskimos
- sell ice to Eskimos
- sell in May, …and go away, …and stay away, …then go away
- sell like hot cakes / sell like hotcakes
- sell off, sell-off
- sell on
- sell one's ass
- sell one's birthright for a mess of pottage
- sell one's body
- sell oneself, sell oneself short
- sell one's life dearly
- sell one's own grandmother
- sell one's soul
- sell one's soul to the devil
- sell one's soul to the Devil
- sell order
- sell out, sell-out
- sell past the close
- sell refrigerators to eskimos
- sell salt to a slug
- sell short
- sell side
- sell snow to Eskimos
- sell someone a bill of goods
- sell someone a pup
- sell-sword
- sell the dummy
- sell the pass
- sell-through
- sell up
- sell wolf tickets / …woof tickets
- short sell, short-sell
- sold again and got the money
- upsell
- what wins on Sunday sells on Monday
Descendants
[edit]Translations
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Noun
[edit]sell (plural sells)
- An act of selling; sale.
- 1963, American Society of Travel Agents, ASTA Travel News, volume 32, page 55:
- Now the easiest sell in traveldom is made even easier.
- (figurative, by extension) The promotion of an idea for acceptance.
- This is going to be a tough sell.
- An easy task.
- (colloquial, dated) An imposition, a cheat; a hoax; a disappointment; anything occasioning a loss of pride or dignity.
- 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 12”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:
- "Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you must confess the chances are a million to one against it. It'll be an awful sell if at the end you have to acknowledge you've made a hash of it."
- 1922, Katherine Mansfield, The Doll's House (Selected Stories, Oxford World's Classics paperback 2002, 354)
- What a sell for Lena!
Derived terms
[edit]See also
[edit]Etymology 2
[edit]From French selle, from Latin sella.
Alternative forms
[edit]Noun
[edit]sell (plural sells)
- (obsolete) A seat or stool.
- 1600, [Torquato Tasso], “The Fourth Booke of Godfrey of Bulloigne”, in Edward Fairefax [i.e., Edward Fairfax], transl., Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Ierusalem. […], London: […] Ar[nold] Hatfield, for I[saac] Iaggard and M[atthew] Lownes, →OCLC, stanza 7, page 56:
- The tyrant proud frown’d from his loftie cell, [...].
- (archaic) A saddle.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- turning to that place, in which whyleare / He left his loftie steed with golden sell, / And goodly gorgeous barbes, him found not theare [...].
Etymology 3
[edit]From Old Saxon seill or Old Norse seil. Cognate with Dutch zeel (“rope”), German Seil (“rope”).
Noun
[edit]sell (plural sells)
- (regional, obsolete) A rope (usually for tying up cattle, but can also mean any sort of rope).
- He picked up the sell from the straw-strewn barn-floor, snelly sneaked up behind her and sleekly slung it around her swire while scryingː "dee, dee ye fooking quhoreǃ".
Derived terms
[edit]References
[edit]Anagrams
[edit]Breton
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Proto-Celtic *stillom, cognate to Welsh syll and Old Irish sell.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]sell m
Chinese
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]sell
See also
[edit]References
[edit]Pennsylvania German
[edit]Pronoun
[edit]sell
Determiner
[edit]sell
Declension
[edit]Declension of seller | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
masculine | feminine | neuter | plural | |
nominative | seller | selle, selli | sell | selle, selli |
dative | sellem, sem | sellere, sellre, seller | sellem, sem | selle |
accusative | seller | selle, selli | sell | selle, selli |
Scots
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Old English sellan.
Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]sell (third-person singular simple present sells, present participle sellin, simple past sellt or sauld, past participle sellt or sauld)
- To sell.
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- English terms with homophones
- Rhymes:English/ɛl
- Rhymes:English/ɛl/1 syllable
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *selh₁-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms inherited from Proto-West Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-West Germanic
- English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English lemmas
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- English ditransitive verbs
- English intransitive verbs
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- English ergative verbs
- English slang
- en:Professional wrestling
- Australian English
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English colloquialisms
- English dated terms
- English terms borrowed from French
- English terms derived from French
- English terms derived from Latin
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English terms with archaic senses
- Regional English
- English calculator words
- English irregular verbs
- en:Business
- en:Money
- en:Prostitution
- Breton terms inherited from Proto-Celtic
- Breton terms derived from Proto-Celtic
- Breton terms with IPA pronunciation
- Breton lemmas
- Breton nouns
- Breton masculine nouns
- Cantonese terms borrowed from English
- Cantonese terms derived from English
- Chinese lemmas
- Cantonese lemmas
- Chinese verbs
- Cantonese verbs
- Chinese terms with IPA pronunciation
- Chinese terms written in foreign scripts
- Hong Kong Cantonese
- Pennsylvania German lemmas
- Pennsylvania German pronouns
- Pennsylvania German non-lemma forms
- Pennsylvania German determiner forms
- Scots terms inherited from Old English
- Scots terms derived from Old English
- Scots terms with IPA pronunciation
- Scots lemmas
- Scots verbs