Word.ws English Dictionary

sell dearly

sell dearly verb: to make one's opponent pay a very high price to defeat or obtain (a person, unit, vehicle, or territory).

Verb

sell dearly (third-person singular simple present sells dearly, present participle selling dearly, simple past and past participle sold dearly)

  1. (especially, idiomatic, unit, or vehicle) To make one's opponent pay a very high price to defeat or obtain (a person, unit, vehicle, or territory).
    • Realizing he is now boxed in on all sides, Hipper decides the only remaining card he has to play is to sell his ships as dearly as possible. The remaining German ships make a hard turn southeast, and drive headlong at the Grand Fleet. It is a brave gesture, but only eight of the ships emerge from...2018 October 17, Drachinifel, 24:24 from the start, in Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918, archived from the original on 04 Aug 2022

Forms of sell dearly

third-person singular presentsells dearly
present participleselling dearly
past participlesold dearly
pastsold dearly

Questions about sell dearly

What does sell dearly mean?
Sell dearly means to make one's opponent pay a very high price to defeat or obtain (a person, unit, vehicle, or territory).
What part of speech is sell dearly?
Sell dearly is a verb.
What is the past tense of sell dearly?
The past tense of sell dearly is sold dearly.

Words near sell dearly in the dictionary

  1. sell away
  2. sell bargains
  3. sell by the candle
  4. sell coal to Newcastle
  5. sell coals to Newcastle
  6. sell dearly
  7. sell down
  8. sell down the river
  9. sell freezers to Eskimos
  10. sell ice to Eskimos
  11. sell in May

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sell dearly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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