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auction |
Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Legal, Idioms, Wikipedia, Hutchinson | 0.09 sec. |
auctionBuying and selling of property through open public bidding. Typically, potential purchasers make a succession of increasing bids or offers until the highest (and final) bid is accepted by the auctioneer. At a so-called Dutch auction, by contrast, the seller offers property at successively lower prices until one of his offers is accepted or until the price drops so low as to force the withdrawal of the offered property. Prospective buyers are usually allowed to examine auction items beforehand, and sellers may set a minimum price below which the property will not be sold. Auctions are important in the agricultural markets of many countries, permitting the rapid sale of perishable goods. Other items often sold at auction include artwork and antiques, secondhand goods, and farms and buildings repossessed by banks or the government. Auctions can be structured in many ways (e.g., bids submitted in person, via telephone, or over the Internet). Auction selling is also employed on stock and commodity exchanges. auction the competitive calls made in bridge and other games before play begins, undertaking to win a given number of tricks if a certain suit is trumps How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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Then he realized that for such a craft to sell at auction for fifty-five pounds meant that there was small chance for saving her. This same in- fernal law had existed in our own South in my own time, more than thirteen hundred years later, and under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove that they were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery without the circumstance making any particular im- pression upon me; but the minute law and the auction block came into my personal experience, a thing which had been merely improper before became sud- denly hellish. I sold all my household goods by public auction, and joined a company of merchants who traded by sea, embarking with them at Balsora in a ship which we had fitted out between us. |
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