Auctioned

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of presenting goods for sale where buyers compete by placing bids to determine the highest price
2. An event in which items are sold to the person willing to pay the most based on sequential bids
3. Offered and sold at a public sale where buyers place competing bids to win the item

Etymology: "Auctioned" is the past tense and past participle of "auction," so its story is really the story of the verb's root. The noun came into English from Latin "auctio," meaning an increase, and that sense is the clue to the whole word. A sale by auction works by bids climbing upward, each one an increase on the last, until the highest bidder wins the item. The Latin "auctio" grew from "augere," meaning to increase, which is also the source of "augment" and "author." The link between a writer and an increase is less strange than it looks: an author was, in the Latin sense, someone who makes things grow or come into being. The auction, then, is named for the act of raising the price rather than for the sale itself.

Synonyms: sold, bid, offered