sell
/sɛl/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.98 in modern English
4
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To transfer goods or provide services in exchange for money.
Intransitive verb; Transitive verb
verb
To be sold.
verb
To promote (a product or service) although not being paid in any direct way or at all.
Transitive verb
verb
To pretend that an opponent's blows or maneuvers are causing legitimate injury; to act.
Slang; Transitive verb
verb
To throw under the bus; to let down one's own team in an endeavour, especially in a sport or a game.
Intransitive verb; Slang
Example Sentences
- "She sold her old car very quickly."
- "I'll sell you three books for a hundred dollars."
- "Sorry, I'm not prepared to sell."
- "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor."
- "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."
- "This old stock will never sell."
Etymology
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-. Cognates Cognate with Scots sell (“to sell”), Danish sælge (“to sell”), Norwegian Bokmål selge (“to sell”), Norwegian Nynorsk selja, selje (“to sell”), Swedish sälja (“to sell”), Faroese and Icelandic selja (“to sell”), Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌻𐌾𐌰𐌽 (saljan, “to pay tribute, make an offer”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
buy low, sell high
buy when it snows 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