Word.ws English Dictionary

sells out

sells out is the third-person singular simple present indicative of sell out.

Meaning of sell out

Verb

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

  1. To sell all of a supply or stock of something.
    • They sold out of concert posters yesterday and won't get another shipment until next week.
    Synonyms:
    run out, stock out
  2. (intransitive) To abandon or betray one's principles to seek profit or other personal advantage; to abandon or betray one's supporters through this change.
    • It used to be a pleasant little community, until the leaders sold out to the developers.
  3. (transitive) To betray (a person), usually a close friend or family member, for personal gain.
    • I'll kill him if I see him again; he sold me out.
  4. To sell one's business (with a connotative emphasis on entirety and finality).
    • The owners long resisted buyout offers, but when they were ready to retire, they finally sold out to a competitor.
    1. (figuratively) To commit or abandon oneself entirely (to a cause, a team, etc.).
  5. (historical) To sell one's commission.
    • After the peace of Versailles he resided in England; but, about three years before the breaking out of the Revolution, he sold out his commission in the army and emigrated to New York.1857, Washington Irving, Life of George Washington, volume 2, page 267

See all 8 meanings of sell out

Questions about sells out

What is sells out the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Sells out is the third-person singular simple present indicative of sell out.

Words near sells out in the dictionary

  1. sells one's life dearly
  2. sells one's own grandmother
  3. sells one's soul
  4. sells one's soul to the devil
  5. sells oneself
  6. sells out
  7. sells out from under
  8. sells past the close
  9. sells salt to a slug
  10. sells short
  11. sells snow to Eskimos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sells out (page history and authors); sell out (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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Cite this entry: “sells out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sells_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.