売る
うる
uru
= to sell; to deal in; to trade
売る is the everyday word for selling in Japanese — straightforward in a shop transaction, but also the verb you reach for when someone betrays a trust or seeks out a fight.
売る (uru) is a godan transitive verb meaning “to sell.” Its most common use is in commerce — selling goods, a house, or a business. But 売る appears in several fixed expressions with figurative meanings that go well beyond transactions. 名前を売る (namae wo uru) means “to make a name for oneself” — literally to “sell” one’s name, i.e., to build recognition. 喧嘩を売る (kenka wo uru) means “to pick a fight” — to “sell” a quarrel to someone. 友人を売る means “to betray a friend.” These idiomatic uses give 売る a surprisingly broad emotional register for a basic N5 verb.
The pair to know is 売る (uru, to sell) and 買う (kau, to buy). In many grammar drills these two appear together precisely because they are antonyms at the same JLPT level. Conjugation: uru → urana i (neg) → utte (te-form) → utta (past). Watch for 売り切れ (urikire, sold out) — a compound that learners encounter early in real-life Japanese shopping situations.
売 (bai/u) depicts a cross (十) over a net (罒) over a person (儿) — historically suggesting a trader exchanging goods through a net or rack. The character encodes the idea of exchange at its visual core.
Everyday use
古い自転車をフリマアプリで売りました。
Furui jitensha wo furima apuri de urimashita.
I sold my old bicycle on a flea market app.
Formal / Cultural context
弊社では主に農産物を海外に売っております。
Heisha de wa omo ni nousanbutsu wo kaigai ni utte orimasu.
Our company mainly sells agricultural products overseas.
Casual / Social Media
向こうから喧嘩を売ってきたんだから、こっちも黙ってないよ。
Mukou kara kenka wo utte kita n dakara, kocchi mo damatte nai yo.
They picked a fight with me, so I’m not just going to stay quiet.
Japan has a rich market culture — from traditional 市場 (ichiba, open-air markets) to modern フリマアプリ (flea market apps like Mercari). The verb 売る is central to all of these contexts. The rise of secondhand selling platforms in Japan has made 売る a very active part of everyday digital vocabulary among younger generations, who regularly 売る items ranging from clothes to collectibles.
The idiom 喧嘩を売る (to pick a fight, literally to sell a quarrel) reflects a conceptual framing in Japanese where aggression is something offered or initiated by one side. The person who sells a fight bears responsibility for starting it — and 喧嘩を買う (to take up the fight, to buy the quarrel) means accepting the provocation. The transactional metaphor maps social conflict onto commercial exchange.