Deal

How to spell deal

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce deal

What does deal mean?

1. nounAn arrangement, bargain, or business agreement between parties.
2. verbTo distribute cards, to do business, or to cope with something.
3. nounA large amount or extent of something, as in 'a great deal'.

Deal in a sentence

• noun

  The two firms signed a deal worth millions.

• verb

  It was his turn to deal the cards for the next round.

• noun

  They spent a great deal of money on the renovation.

• noun

  She negotiated a better deal on the car than the salesman first offered.

• verb

  The manager had to deal with a flood of complaints.

• noun

  The report contains a good deal of useful information.

Where does deal come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Deal comes from the Old English noun dǣl, meaning 'a part, a portion, or a share', and the related verb dǣlan, meaning 'to divide or distribute'. These belong to a wider Germanic family; the same root survives in modern German Teil, 'a part', and in the English word 'dole', as in to dole something out. The original sense of dividing into shares is exactly why we still 'deal' cards by handing out portions to each player, and why a generous amount is 'a great deal', literally a large share. From the idea of distributing and doing business with one another came the later sense of a bargain or agreement, which grew especially common from the 1800s. There is also a separate but related Middle English and Low German strand giving 'deal' as a word for sawn fir or pine timber, again from the notion of a board cut as a portion from a log.

How the word is built

• deal (single Old English root dǣl meaning a part or share; no prefix or suffix)