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Buy


BUY, verb transitive preterit tense and participle passive bought. pronoun bawt.]

1. To acquire the property, right or title to any thing, by paying a consideration or an equivalent in money. It differs from barter only in this, that in barter the consideration or equivalent is some species of commodity; in purchase, the consideration is money paid or promised. To purchase; to acquire by paying a price to the satisfaction of the seller; opposed to sell.

2. To procure by a consideration given, or by something that is deemed worth the thing bought; to procure at a price; as, to buy pleasure with praise; to buy favor with flattery.

3. To bribe; to corrupt or pervert the judgment, by paying a consideration.

To buy off, to influence to compliance; to cause to bend or yield by some consideration, as to buy off conscience; to detach by a consideration given, as to buy off one from a party.

To buy out, to buy off, or detach from.

1. To purchase the share or shares of a person in a stock, fund, or partnership, by which the seller is separated from the company, and the purchaser takes his place, as, A buys out B. To purchase stock in any fund or partnership, is to buy in.

To buy on credit, is to purchase a thing, on a promise in fact or in law, to make payment at a future day.

To buy the refusal, is to give money for the right of purchasing at a fixed price at a future time.

To buy the small pox, in South Wales, is to receive it by inoculation.

In popular language, to buy is to pay dear for, as in Chaucer.

BUY, verb intransitive To negotiate, or treat about a purchase.

I will buy with you and sell with you.