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selling

noun

Simple meaning

Skill at salesmanship.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

sehling

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈsɛlɪŋ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. Action of the verb to sell.

  2. Skill at salesmanship.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Action of the verb to sell.

Used this way, selling is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use selling

  • “My boss is very old-fashioned and I'm having a lot of trouble selling the idea of working at home occasionally.”verb
  • “You've got to work on your selling.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

selling pricepersonal selling

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • sellverbBase word

    Exchange or deliver for money or its equivalent.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • sellernounPerson or profession

    Someone who promotes or exchanges goods or services for money.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • selling agentnounCompound term

    Someone who sells goods (on commission) for others.

  • selling pointnounCompound term

    A characteristic of something that is up for sale that makes it attractive to potential customers.

  • selling pricenounCompound term

    The price at which something is offered for sale.

  • selling racenounCompound term

    A horse race in which the winning horse must be put up for auction.

  • short sellingnounCompound term

    Sale of securities or commodity futures not owned by the seller (who hopes to buy them back later at a lower price).

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • sell offverbRelated term

    Get rid of by selling, usually at reduced prices.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: the verb to sell

marketing

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.