sell

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• IPA^(key): /sɛl/
• Rhymes: -ɛl
• Homophone: cell

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

sell (third-person singular simple present sells, present participle selling, simple past and past participle sold)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To transfer goods or provide services in exchange for money.
   • Bible, Matthew xix. 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.

   I'll sell you all three for a hundred dollars.

   Sorry, I'm not prepared to sell.

2. (ergative) To be sold.

   This old stock will never sell.

   The corn sold for a good price.

3. To promote a product or service.
   • 2016, "The Fetal Kick Catalyst", 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.

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. To betray for money.
6. (slang) To trick, cheat, or manipulate someone.
   • (Can we find and add a quotation of Charles Dickens to this entry?)
   • 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.

7. (professional wrestling, slang) To pretend that an opponent's blows or maneuvers are causing legitimate injury; to act.

• buy

• Sranan Tongo: seri

sell (plural sells)

1. An act of selling.

   This is going to be a tough sell.

2. An easy task.
3. (colloquial, dated) An imposition, a cheat; a hoax; a disappointment; anything occasioning a loss of pride or dignity.
   • 1919, W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, ch. 12

     "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: What a sell for Lena! - Katherine Mansfield, The Doll's House (Selected Stories, Oxford World's Classics paperback 2002, 354)

• sale

From French selle, from Latin sella.

• selle (obsolete)

sell (plural sells)

1. (obsolete) A seat or stool.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Fairfax to this entry?)

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 [...].

From Old Saxon seill or Old Norse seil. Cognate with Dutch zeel (“rope”), German Seil (“rope”).

sell (plural sells)

1. (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".

• bowsell

• The Dictionary of the Scots Language

• Ells, ells

• IPA^(key): /sɛl/

sell m

1. look, glance

Cognate to German selbig (“the same (one)”).

sell

1. that one

sell

1. that
   • 1954, Albert F. Buffington, A Pennsylvania German grammar, pages 32 and 81:

     sell Haus datt driwwe

     that house over there

     […]

     In sellem alde Glaawe maag en bissel Waahret schtecke.

     In that old belief there may be a bit of truth.

   • For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:sell.

• Earl C Haag, Pennsylvania German Reader and Grammar (2010), page 204

From Old English sellan.

• IPA^(key): /sɛl/

sell (third-person singular present sells, present participle sellin, past sellt or sauld, past participle sellt or sauld)

1. To sell.

From Old Norse sil, a word also recorded in Norway as sel, in Sweden as silder, sälder, standard Swedish sel, from the root of Old Norse seinn and síð.

• IPA^(key): [sel], [séːɭ]
  • Rhymes: -el, -éːl

sĕll n (definite singular sellä, definite plural sella or selja)

1. pool, calm water (occurring in the course of a stream)

   dä sellä gjär ’n mil langt

   The calm water at that place stretches for a mile.