WHOLESALE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does wholesale mean? 

• WHOLESALE (noun)
  The noun WHOLESALE has 1 sense:

1. the selling of goods to merchants; usually in large quantities for resale to consumers

  Familiarity information: WHOLESALE used as a noun is very rare.

• WHOLESALE (adjective)
  The adjective WHOLESALE has 1 sense:

1. ignoring distinctions

  Familiarity information: WHOLESALE used as an adjective is very rare.

• WHOLESALE (verb)
  The verb WHOLESALE has 1 sense:

1. sell in large quantities

  Familiarity information: WHOLESALE used as a verb is very rare.

• WHOLESALE (adverb)
  The adverb WHOLESALE has 2 senses:

1. at a wholesale price

2. on a large scale without careful discrimination

  Familiarity information: WHOLESALE used as an adverb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WHOLESALE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The selling of goods to merchants; usually in large quantities for resale to consumers

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("wholesale" is a kind of...):

marketing; merchandising; selling (the exchange of goods for an agreed sum of money)

Antonym:

retail (the selling of goods to consumers; usually in small quantities and not for resale)

Derivation:

wholesale (sell in large quantities)

• WHOLESALE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Ignoring distinctions

Synonyms:

sweeping; wholesale

Context example:

wholesale destruction

Similar:

indiscriminate (not marked by fine distinctions)

• WHOLESALE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they wholesale    ... he / she / it wholesales   
Past simple: wholesaled   
Past participle: wholesaled   
-ing form: wholesaling   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Sell in large quantities

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Hypernyms (to "wholesale" is one way to...):

sell (exchange or deliver for money or its equivalent)

Domain category:

commerce; commercialism; mercantilism (transactions (sales and purchases) having the objective of supplying commodities (goods and services))

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Antonym:

retail (sell on the retail market)

Derivation:

wholesale (the selling of goods to merchants; usually in large quantities for resale to consumers)

wholesaler (someone who buys large quantities of goods and resells to merchants rather than to the ultimate customers)

• WHOLESALE (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

At a wholesale price

Context example:

I can sell it to you wholesale

Antonym:

retail (at a retail price)

Sense 2

Meaning:

On a large scale without careful discrimination

Synonyms:

in large quantities; wholesale

Context example:

I buy food wholesale

 Context examples 

Bred them Suffolk Punches by wholesale?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Well, sir, every day, ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been orders and complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Their wholesale price was six shillings, but the retailer would get twelve or more.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And to dinner Martin came, making himself agreeable with the fat wholesale butcher and his fatter wife—important folk, they, likely to be of use to a rising young man like Hermann Von Schmidt.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The dry-goods stores were not down among the counting-houses, banks, and wholesale warerooms, where gentlemen most do congregate, but Jo found herself in that part of the city before she did a single errand, loitering along as if waiting for someone, examining engineering instruments in one window and samples of wool in another, with most unfeminine interest, tumbling over barrels, being half-smothered by descending bales, and hustled unceremoniously by busy men who looked as if they wondered 'how the deuce she got there'.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

We have seen both the retailers and also the wholesale manufacturers.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“Here's a gen'lm'n behind me, I'll pound it,” said William, “as has bred 'em by wholesale.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

At a wholesale liquor store he bought two gallon-demijohns of old port, and with one in each hand boarded a Mission Street car, Martin at his heels burdened with several quart-bottles of whiskey.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)