Bestseller

How to spell bestseller

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce bestseller

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bestseller mean?

1. nounA product, especially a book, that sells in very large numbers compared with others of its kind.

Bestseller in a sentence

• Her debut novel became an instant bestseller within a week of release.

• The publisher promoted the memoir as their biggest bestseller of the year.

Where does bestseller come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Bestseller is a transparent compound built from the everyday English words 'best', the superlative of 'good' descended from Old English 'betst', and 'seller', from the verb 'sell', which comes from Old English 'sellan' meaning 'to give' or 'to hand over'. The literal idea is something that sells better than all its rivals, and the compound emerged in American English in the late nineteenth century, originally written as two words or hyphenated. By the early twentieth century the noun had settled firmly on books and on the published lists, such as those of newspapers, that ranked which titles were selling most copies. Over time the closed-up single word spelling became standard on both sides of the Atlantic. The chief spelling trap is remembering that it is now one solid word with a double 'l' from 'sell', not 'best seller' or 'bestseler'.

How the word is built

• best (superlative of good)
• sell (to vend)
• -er (agent noun) compounded into a single word