to sell dearly
- phrasal verb
- Informal
:
pagar caro
- She realized too late that she would sell dearly for ignoring the warnings.
Examples
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He learned the hard way that he would sell dearly for taking unnecessary risks.
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They sold dearly for their complacency when the real consequences struck.
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After making that irreversible error, he knew he would sell dearly for it.
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He will sell dearly for his mistakes!
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They sold dearly for the poor decisions made last year.
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After she ignored the advice of her mentor, she knew she would sell dearly for that mistake.
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The team will sell dearly for underestimating their opponents in the final match.
Synonyms
12
5.8
To suffer serious harm or loss because of an action
How Costly
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal pairing of 'sell' (transfer ownership) with 'dearly' (at great cost) straightforwardly yields the sense of selling at a high price, so a B1 learner who knows the words can often infer that reading. However, the extended metaphorical reading — suffering heavy consequences or 'paying dearly' for actions — is less directly derivable and depends on idiomatic usage (and conflation with 'pay dearly'), making the overall meaning only partly predictable.
Etymology
Sell dearly may come from an old battle image: if soldiers defended a place and made attackers suffer many losses, they sold their ground but at a dear cost to the enemy. So, it now means to make someone 'pay a high price' or suffer serious consequences for what they did.