Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

fire sale

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.82 in modern English

Syllables: fire sale
IPA

11

Scrabble Score

8

Letters

1

Syllables

7

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A clearance sale at greatly reduced prices, often at losses.

Example Sentences

"By the following year, Lehman’s enormous holdings in subprime loans were all but wiped out, and Bush was enlisted to see if he could engineer a fire sale of some of the bank’s empire of debt to the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim."
"Bruce was happy with a point and is now focused on surviving a fire-sale at the KC Stadium before the transfer window shuts, with Tom Huddlestone linked with West Ham. “We have lost 14 players and brought in five or six but the transfer window [closing] is still three weeks away,” he said."
"The fire sale comes a week after FTX provided a $250 million emergency line of credit to BlockFi."

Etymology

By metonymy, from 19th century discount sales of products that had been damaged by fire or that could no longer be stored because the storage facility had been destroyed by fire necessitating immediate sale or loss of value.

Inflected Forms

fire sales (plural)

Questions

What does fire sale mean?: A clearance sale at greatly reduced prices, often at losses.
Where does fire sale come from?: By metonymy, from 19th century discount sales of products that had been damaged by fire or that could no longer be stored because the storage facility had been destroyed by fire necessitating immediate sale or loss of value.

How to pronounce fire sale

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