Other forms: sales
A sale is a shop cutting its prices for a while so that the stock moves. Red tickets on every rail, half off in the window, a queue outside before the doors open.
The plainer meaning is any act of selling: the sale of the house went through on Friday. In the plural, sales is what a business counts and the department that does the selling — a sales team, sales figures, a salesperson. Watch the two small phrases, because they part company across the Atlantic. For sale means somebody wants to sell it; on sale in Britain means it is available to buy, while on sale in America means it is cheap this week. A house goes up for sale, and tickets go on sale on Monday morning.
1nounsaleA period when a shop sells its goods at lower prices than usual.~6%
“She bought the coat in the January sale for half what it had been.”
2nounactThe act of selling something; an exchange of goods or property for money.~88%
“The sale of the flat took four months to complete.”
3nounpluralIn the plural, the quantity of goods sold, or the part of a company that sells them.~6%
“Sales fell in the second half of the year and two shops closed.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
sale is an exchange of goods for money.
Sale comes from Old English sala, the act of selling, strengthened by Old Norse sala, which meant the same thing. Both go back to a Proto-Germanic word salō meaning delivery, and behind that a Proto-Indo-European root selh₁- meaning to grab. The old picture is the handing over rather than the money.
Proto-Indo-European
*selh₁- — to grab
Proto-Germanic
*salō — delivery
Old Norse
sala — sale
Old English
sala — act of selling, sale
Middle English
sale
English, today
sale
From Middle English sale, from Old English sala (“act of selling, sale”), from Old Norse sala (“sale”), from Proto-Germanic salō (“delivery”), from Proto-Indo-European selh₁- (“to grab”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA