Sell

How to spell sell

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sell

What does sell mean?

1. verbTo exchange goods, property, or services for money.

Sell in a sentence

• They hope to sell the house before the winter.

• The shop will sell tickets at the door on the night.

Where does sell come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Sell comes from the Old English verb sellan, which originally meant 'to give, hand over, or deliver' rather than specifically to exchange for money. It traces back to a Germanic root that gave related words across the northern languages, including Old Norse selja and Old High German sellen. In its earliest English use it covered any act of handing something to another person, which is why phrases like 'sell into slavery' still carry that older flavour of delivering rather than trading. Over the medieval period the meaning narrowed to the modern commercial sense of exchanging goods for a price. The spelling is short and irregular only in its past tense 'sold', which preserves an old vowel change, while the present tense kept the doubled l from the Old English form. Its perfect homophone 'cell' has a completely separate Latin origin (cella, a small room), which is exactly why the two are confused on the page despite sounding identical.

How the word is built

• sell (Old English sellan: to give, hand over, deliver)

Words that sound like sell

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• cell: A small room in which a prisoner is locked, or a similar small enclosed space.