Sell

Pronunciation

• IPA: /sÉ›l/
• Rhymes: -É›l
• Homophones: cell

From Middle English sellen, from Old English sellan ("give"), later "give up for money", from Proto-Germanic *saljaną. Compare Danish sælge, Swedish sälja, Icelandic selja.

Full definition of sell

Verb

1. (transitive, intransitive) To transfer goods or provide services in exchange for money.
• Bible, Matthew xix. 21If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.
• 2013-08-10, A new prescription, 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.
2. I'll sell you all three for a hundred dollars.   Sorry, I'm not prepared to sell.
3. (ergative) To be sold.
   This old stock will never sell.   The corn sold for a good price.
4. 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.
5. (slang) To trick, cheat, or manipulate someone.
• 2011, January 12, Saj Chowdhury, Liverpool 2-1 Liverpool, 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.
6. (professional wrestling, slang) To pretend that an opponent's blows or maneuvers are causing legitimate injury; to act.

Antonyms

• buy

Derived terms

Noun

1. An act of selling.This is going to be a tough sell.
2. An easy task.
• 1922: What a sell for Lena! - Katherine Mansfield, The Doll's House (Selected Stories, Oxford World's Classics paperback 2002, 354)
3. (colloquial, dated) An imposition, a cheat; a hoax.
• 1919, William Somerset Maugham, ,"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."

From French selle, from Latin sella.

Alternative forms

• selle obsolete

Noun

1. (obsolete) A seat or stool.
2. (archaic) A saddle.
• 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.ii:turning to that place, in which whyleare
  He left his loftie steed with golden sell,
  And goodly gorgeous barbes, him found not theare ....

Anagrams

• ells