Sell

A saddle. “Vaulting ambition … oʹerleaps its sell” (Macbeth, i. 7). (Latin, sella; French, selle.) Window sill is the Anglo-Saxon syl (a basement).

“He left his loftie steed with golden sell.”

Spenser: Faërie Queene, ii. 2.

Sell, sold. Made a captive, as a purchased slave. St. Paul says he was “sold under sin” (Rom. vii. 14). (Anglo-Saxon, sell-an, to give.)

A sell. A “do,” a deception, a “takein.” Street vendors who take in the unwary with catchpennies, chuckle like hens when they have laid an egg, “Sold again, and got the money!”

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.