Handsell

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. To promote a book or product by personally recommending it to buyers ; an old-fashioned gift or payment given to confirm that a deal has been struck
2. Personally endorsing an item to customers so they will buy it ; a token presented to mark and secure an agreement, as in earlier commerce
3. Recommending goods face to face to a shopper, especially a book ; a small sum or present handed over to bind a bargain in former times

Etymology: Handsel, and its spelling variant handsell, names a gift given at the start of something new: a first sale of the day, a New Year's present, or a token that opens a business or a new relationship. The word's core is simply "hand" and "gift," and the old idea was that a first transaction set the tone for everything that followed. The word reached English in Middle English as "handsell" or "hanselle," and its immediate ancestors are Old English "handselen" and Old Norse "handsal," which means "hand-gift." The Old Norse form is the likelier influence on the English one, since the two languages were in close contact in northern England, and the word survives in Scots as "hansel" and in Danish as "handsel," showing it was once shared across the North Sea region. The verb sense, meaning to give a handsel or to inaugurate something with a first use, grew from the noun in the same way that many nouns of giving became verbs of giving. The spelling "handsell" is simply one of the older and accepted variant forms.

Synonyms: earnest, token, gift