"fire sale" meaning in English

See fire sale in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: fire sales [plural]
Etymology: By metonymy, from 19th century discount sales of products that had been damaged by fire or that could no longer be stored because the storage facility had been destroyed by fire necessitating immediate sale or loss of value. Etymology templates: {{l|en|metonymy}} metonymy Head templates: {{en-noun}} fire sale (plural fire sales)
  1. (idiomatic) A clearance sale at greatly reduced prices, often at losses. Wikipedia link: fire sale Tags: idiomatic Translations (clearance sale at reduced prices): 清倉甩賣 (Chinese Mandarin), 清仓甩卖 (qīngcāng shuǎimài) (Chinese Mandarin), poistomyynti (Finnish), Ausverkauf [masculine] (German), โละทิ้ง (Thai), ขายโละทิ้ง (Thai)

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for fire sale meaning in English (3.1kB)

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          "ref": "2015, Chris Lehmann, ‘The Candidates’, London Review of Books, volume 37, number 12",
          "text": "By the following year, Lehman’s enormous holdings in subprime loans were all but wiped out, and Bush was enlisted to see if he could engineer a fire sale of some of the bank’s empire of debt to the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.",
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          "ref": "2015 August 16, Press Association, “Wolves rescue point against Hull thanks to Allan McGregor howler”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "Bruce was happy with a point and is now focused on surviving a fire-sale at the KC Stadium before the transfer window shuts, with Tom Huddlestone linked with West Ham. “We have lost 14 players and brought in five or six but the transfer window [closing] is still three weeks away,” he said.",
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          "ref": "2022 June 30, Kate Rooney, “FTX closes in on a deal to buy embattled crypto lender BlockFi for $25 million in a fire sale, source says”, in CNBC",
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        "A clearance sale at greatly reduced prices, often at losses."
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        "(idiomatic) A clearance sale at greatly reduced prices, often at losses."
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          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
          "word": "清倉甩賣"
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          "code": "cmn",
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          "roman": "qīngcāng shuǎimài",
          "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
          "word": "清仓甩卖"
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          "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
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          "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
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          "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
          "word": "โละทิ้ง"
        },
        {
          "code": "th",
          "lang": "Thai",
          "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
          "word": "ขายโละทิ้ง"
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          "ref": "2015 August 16, Press Association, “Wolves rescue point against Hull thanks to Allan McGregor howler”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "Bruce was happy with a point and is now focused on surviving a fire-sale at the KC Stadium before the transfer window shuts, with Tom Huddlestone linked with West Ham. “We have lost 14 players and brought in five or six but the transfer window [closing] is still three weeks away,” he said.",
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      "code": "cmn",
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      "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
      "word": "清倉甩賣"
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      "code": "cmn",
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      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
      "word": "poistomyynti"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
      "tags": [
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      "word": "Ausverkauf"
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    {
      "code": "th",
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      "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
      "word": "โละทิ้ง"
    },
    {
      "code": "th",
      "lang": "Thai",
      "sense": "clearance sale at reduced prices",
      "word": "ขายโละทิ้ง"
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  "word": "fire sale"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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