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Glite Dictionary
🙅 To discourage buying 🚫 To not sell ↩️ To cancel sale
to unsell

to unsell

1 7.2
To make someone not want to buy something by showing its problems
  • verb
  • /ʌnˈsɛl/
translation icon : desanimar la compra
  • Negative reviews on social media can quickly unsell a popular restaurant.

Examples

  • The poor advertising campaign seemed designed to unsell the new smartphone instead of attracting buyers.

  • The high prices and lack of features might unsell many customers from purchasing that laptop.

  • Well, you just better unsell 'em, sharpish.

    Fiction book (1998)

Antonyms

to sell
978 2.0

To persuade someone to buy or accept something

How Sellable

to sell
∞ 1.0
to advertise
198 2.7
to unsell
1 7.2
to put off
22 3.7
to deter
94 5.6

Surface Forms

unsell infinitive
unselling present participle
unsells third person singular
unsold past
unsold past participle

Morphology

unsell = sell (transparent) = un + sell

Formed by the productive negative prefix 'un-' + the verb 'sell'; a B1 learner who knows 'un-' and 'sell' can infer 'to make not sell' or 'to reverse selling'.

Etymology

Unsell comes from the prefix un- meaning 'not' or 'remove' and sell meaning 'to give for money', so you can think of it as 'taking away the sale'. That's why to unsell something can mean to make it less attractive and discourage someone from buying it.