Sale, n.
See 1st Sallow. [Obs.] Spenser.
1 other Webster entry under this spelling
Sale, n.
1. The act of selling; the transfer of property, or a contract to transfer the ownership of property, from one person to another for a valuable consideration, or for a price in money.
2. Opportunity of selling; demand; market. They shall have ready sale for them. Spenser.
3. Public disposal to the highest bidder, or exposure of goods in market; auction. Sir W. Temple. Bill of sale. See under Bill. -- Of sale, On sale, For sale, to be bought or sold; offered to purchasers; in the market. -- To set to sale, to offer for sale; to put up for purchase; to make merchandise of. [Obs.] Milton.
Shades of meaning
A bargain is strictly an agreement or contract to buy and sell, tho the word is often used to denote the entire transaction and also as a designation for the thing sold or purchased. Change and exchange are words of wider signification, applying only incidentally to the transfer of property or value; a change secures something different in any way or by any means; an exchange secures something as an equivalent or return, tho not necessarily as payment for what is given. Barter is the exchange of one commodity for another, the word being used generally with reference to portable commodities. Trade in the broad sense may apply to vast businesses (as the book-trade), but as denoting a single transaction is used chiefly in regard to things of moderate value, when it becomes nearly synonymous with barter. Sale is commonly, and with increasing strictness, limited to the transfer of property for money, or for something estimated at a money value or considered as equivalent to so much money in hand or to be paid. A deal in the political sense is a bargain, substitution, or transfer for the benefit of certain persons or parties against all others; as, the nomination was the result of a deal; in business it may have a similar meaning, but it frequently signifies simply a sale or exchange, a dealing; as, a heavy deal in stocks.