hard sell
15
5.3
- noun
- /hɑrd sɛl/
- Informal
:
venta agresiva
- Makes perfect sense to me; I don't understand why it's such a hard sell compared to the alternatives.
And you can give them the hard sell of the AI takeover.
- And you can give them the hard sell of the AI takeover.
- So it's a little bit of a hard sell, but generally speaking it's not bad.
- But that's a really hard sell and that's a hard narrative to make to the American people.
- And it's like, even if he wasn't senile, it would be a hard sell at this point, I think.
- But I knew that they knew that I just can use those same actors because it would be a hard sell for BET or to TV One or whoever.
- So that would be things like offers and how TOS social media is a space that requires providing value to build an audience, not just always trying to do a hard sell.
Examples
-
Most cultural diplomats know that the hard sell does not work.
Academic text (1993) -
Even if the administration is right this time, it has a hard sell ahead.
Blog text (5) -
So it's a little bit of a hard sell, but generally speaking it's not bad.
-
All right, we'll go with the hard sell.
-
Well, this is a hard sell.
-
Sam, honey, go easy on the hard sell.
-
Sometimes it was a hard sell to get the men interested in playing us at all.
Fiction book (1998) -
But you're gonna have a hard sell with the parents.
-
But it is a hard sell, and each semester I hear myself sounding more and more antiquarian.
Academic text (2004) -
Many consumers dislike the hard sell tactics used by aggressive salespeople.
Synonyms
26
3.2
A short talk to convince someone to buy something
1
3.0
Speech that tries to make someone buy something
A pushy method to make people buy things
A message that tries too hard to get you to buy something
Antonyms
How Forceful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a forceful and insistent attempt to persuade someone' is directly built from 'hard' (forceful) modifying 'sell' (to persuade or exchange), so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes aggressive sales tactics. This modifier+noun compositional pattern is common and cross‑linguistically regular, making the phrase immediately comprehensible to a B1-level learner.
Etymology
Hard sell may come from the image of a seller using a very hard push to finish a sell, like a salesperson pressing a customer to buy. That's why hard sell now means a strong, pushy attempt to get someone to buy ('to persuade someone strongly').