It was on sale. - English example sentence

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{{vm.sentence.expandLabel}} Fewer translations

davidculley March 17, 2024 March 17, 2024 at 4:54:24 PM UTC

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In American English, there is the distinction between

- being for sale (meaning you can buy it)
- being on sale (meaning it's currently discounted)

Since the creator of this sentence speaks American English, not British English, he/she probably meant the "being discounted" meaning when he/she wrote "on sale".

Most if not all translations, however, present the translation for "being for sale".

There is clearly a mismatch in meaning between the various language pairings that causes confusion in language learners.

The simplest solution probably is to change the English sentence "It was on sale" to "It was for sale".