seals
English
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sells
English
sell
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) sellen, from (etyl) , Icelandic selja.
Verb
(intransitive) To transfer goods or provide services in exchange for money.
* Bible, (w) xix. 21
- If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= A new prescription
, passage=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.}}
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(ergative) To be sold.
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To promote a particular viewpoint.
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(slang) To trick, cheat, or manipulate someone.
* (Charles Dickens)
* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=January 12, author=Saj Chowdhury, work=BBC
, title= Liverpool 2-1 Liverpool
, passage=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.}}
(professional wrestling, slang) To pretend that an opponent’s blows or maneuvers are causing legitimate injury; to act.
Derived terms
* sell-by date
* sell-out
* sell-outs
* sell-through
* sell down
* sell down the river
* sell ice to Eskimos
* sell like hotcakes
* sell one’s soul
* sell out
* sell refrigerators to Eskimos
* sell wolf tickets
Quotations
* To trick, or cheat someone.
*
Noun
(en noun )
An act of selling.
- This is going to be a tough sell .
An easy task.
* 1922‘: What a ”’sell for Lena! – (Katherine Mansfield), ”The Doll’s House (Selected Stories, Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2002, 354)
(colloquial, dated) An imposition, a cheat; a hoax.
* 1919 ,
- “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.”
Etymology 2
From (etyl) selle, from (etyl) sella.
Noun
(en noun )
(obsolete) A seat or stool.
- (Fairfax)
(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 […].
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