sale
Pluralsales
- 1The transfer of goods or services to a buyer in return for money or credit.
The sale of the company involved months of careful negotiation.
No money or credit ever changed hands, so legally there was no sale.
UsageSomething available to buy is for sale: a house for sale. Compare on sale, which often means cheaper.
Similarselling, transaction, deal, disposal
Oppositepurchase, acquisition
- 2Shortened form of discount sale.
The winter sale starts tomorrow with deep markdowns across the store.
She waited for the sale before buying the coat she wanted.
UsageShops have a sale; goods offered at reduced prices are on sale, though on sale can also just mean available to buy.
- 3The act of putting something up for auction so that it goes to the highest bidder.
The estate's contents went to public sale, each lot awarded to the highest bidder.
Bidding at the sale climbed steadily until only one buyer remained.
Similarauction
- 4In the plural, the business activity of selling a company's products, or the department responsible for it.
After two years in customer support, she moved into sales and doubled her income.
The head of sales presented the new pricing plan to the board.
Note
Always the plural form, and used without an article as the name of a line of work: a job in sales, like a job in marketing. Unusually for a noun in front of another noun, it keeps its -s there too: sales team, sales figures, sales pitch. Each single deal is still a sale in the singular.
Less common meaning
- 5A hall or large chamber within a building.
Note
A different word that happens to share the spelling. It comes from Old English sæl, "room, hall, castle," and before that from a Germanic word for a house or hall. Its living relatives are German Saal and Dutch zaal, and it has nothing to do with selling. Now obsolete, it belongs to older texts, and the trap for a modern reader is mistaking it for a sale of goods.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- The hall sense is a separate homograph, etymologically unrelated to selling; this follows from the distinct ancestral roots. en.wiktionary.org
- The word descends from Old English sæl, meaning room, hall or castle. en.wiktionary.org
- Its Germanic ancestor meant house or hall. en.wiktionary.org
- German Saal and Dutch zaal are cognates of the hall word. en.wiktionary.org
- The hall word has a different origin from sale meaning selling. en.wiktionary.org
Practice
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Origins
Proto-Indo-European *selh₁- ("to grab") is the ultimate root. It led to Proto-Germanic *salō ("delivery") and Old Norse sala, which gave Old English sala ("act of selling, sale"). That became Middle English sale.
Proto-Indo-European *sel- ("home, dwelling, village") gave Proto-Germanic *salą ("house, hall"), which became Old English sæl ("room, hall, castle") and then Middle English sale. Dutch zaal, German Saal, and Swedish sal are cognates, and salon and saloon are related.