Word.ws English Dictionary

sold

/səʊld/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Estuary English[sɒʊ(ɫ)d]

sold is the simple past and past participle of sell.

Meaning of sell

Verb

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

  1. (ditransitive, intransitive, transitive) To transfer goods or provide services in exchange for money.
    • She sold her old car very quickly.
    Synonyms:
    peddle, vend
  2. (ergative) To be sold.
    • This old stock will never sell.
  3. (transitive) To promote (a product or service) although not being paid in any direct way or at all.
    • Howard: You're gonna feel terrible when I'm in a wheelchair. Which, by the way, would fit easily in the back of this award-winning minivan.
      Bernadette: Fine, we'll go to the E.R. Just stop selling me on the van.
      Howard: You're right. It sells itself.2016, “The Fetal Kick Catalyst”, in The Big Bang Theory
  4. (transitive) To promote (a particular viewpoint).
    • My boss is very old-fashioned and I'm having a lot of trouble selling the idea of working at home occasionally.
  5. (transitive) To betray for money or other things.
  6. (slang, transitive) To trick, cheat, or manipulate someone.
    • Then weaues
      Other crosse-plots
      New tricks for safety, are sought;
      They thriue: When, bold,
      Each tempt's th'other againe, and all are sold.1605 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, Ben: Ionson His Volpone or The Foxe, [London]: […] [George Eld] for Thomas Thorppe, published 1607, →OCLC, (please specify the Internet Archive page)

See all 16 meanings of sell

Adjective

sold (comparative more sold, superlative most sold)

  1. (informal) Convinced, won over.
    • I type ‘high cortisol’ into the search bar and keep scrolling. ‘You’re not ugly, you just have cortisol face,’ declares one video. ‘POV you finally drop the cortisol belly,’ reads another. A third screams in caps lock, ‘HOW TO LOWER CORTISOL’. I’m sold. Cortisol is to blame for everything. But how...2026 March 20, Brit Dawson, “‘I went on a cortisol ‘detox’ to tackle my spiralling anxiety — here’s what happened’”, in Cosmopolitan

Noun

sold

  1. (obsolete) salary; military pay
    • But were your will her sold to entertaine1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • Lying in campe under sold and pay, fighting as souldiers.1601, William Barlow, A Defense of the Articles of the Protestant Religion in answer to a libell lately cast abroad

Forms of sold

comparativemore sold
superlativemost sold

Origin of sold

From Middle English solde, sould, soud, from Middle French solde, Italian soldo. Compare soldier and Danish sold (via Low German). Doublet of sol, soldo, solid, solidus, sou, and xu.

Words formed from sold

Phrases with sold

29 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with sold

30 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sold

What does sold mean?
Sold means convinced, won over.
What is sold the simple past and past participle of?
Sold is the simple past and past participle of sell.
What part of speech is sold?
Sold can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce sold?
Sold is pronounced /səʊld/ (UK).

Words near sold in the dictionary

  1. solaverbascine
  2. solavetivone
  3. solayamocinoside
  4. Solchenberger
  5. solcoseryl
  6. sold
  7. sold again and got the money
  8. sold against the box
  9. sold away
  10. sold bargains
  11. sold by the candle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sold (page history and authors); sell (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-sold.wav, en-us-sold.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sold.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sold. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.