Wholesale is selling goods in bulk to shops rather than to the public. Buy wholesale, the wholesale price, a wholesale market.
The wholesale price is what a shop pays, and the retail price is what you pay. A wholesaler sits between the maker and the shop. As an adjective and adverb, wholesale also means total and indiscriminate: wholesale changes, wholesale destruction, adopted wholesale. That figurative sense is common in writing about reform and is always slightly critical.
1nounwholesaleSelling goods in bulk to shops rather than the public.
“They moved into wholesale and closed the shop.”
2adjectivetotalTotal and indiscriminate.
“There were wholesale changes and nobody was told why.”
wholesale is a way of selling, or a totality.
The word is whole plus sale — selling the whole lot at once rather than by the piece. Retail comes from a French verb meaning to cut up, so the two words are exactly opposite in their images as well as their meanings.
From whole + sale.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Shopping & Money, Business & Money