Word.ws English Dictionary

sells up

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

Meaning of sell up

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) To sell one's business or other major asset (such as a home).
    Synonyms:
    sell out
  2. (UK, transitive) To sell all (of the assets of a company or person), in order to reduce its debts or gain liquid money.
    • […] he was never known to give away a shilling or to do a good action, but was of a pleasant, sly, laughing mood, and would cut his joke and drink his glass with a tenant and sell him up the next day […]1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 9, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    sell out
  3. (sales) To upsell.
    • Attracting consumers with a low-priced feature item and then pointing out weaknesses in order to sell up to a more expensive […]2001, Montrose S. Sommers, James G. Barnes, Fundamentals of marketing, page 438

Questions about sells up

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

Words near sells up in the dictionary

  1. sells snow to Eskimos
  2. sells someone a bill of goods
  3. sells the dummy
  4. sells the family silver
  5. sells the pass
  6. sells up
  7. sells wolf tickets
  8. sellsword
  9. sellswords
  10. sellthrough
  11. sellup

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sells up (page history and authors); sell up (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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