pōleō

This is the everyday word for selling in the marketplace, the seller's side of any ordinary buy-and-sell transaction. Wherever the New Testament pictures a busy market, a temple courtyard crowded with traders, or a person offering something for a price, this is the verb it uses. It covers both keeping a stall as a dealer ("those selling") and the single act of disposing of a possession ("sell what you own").

Because the word itself is so plain, its weight in the Gospels comes from what is being sold and why. When Jesus tells the rich man to sell what he owns and give to the poor, the ordinary commercial word carries a costly demand. When he clears the temple, the same word names the sellers he drives out. And in Revelation the power to buy and sell becomes a picture of total economic control.

It is the natural partner of the word for buying, and the two often stand side by side. It also overlaps with a second Greek verb for selling that leans toward a finished sale or selling a person into slavery. By contrast, this word stays on the everyday side of trade: putting something up for sale and closing the deal.