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In reference to any single item offered for purchase, should I say, 'sale item' or 'sales item'?

Experience tells me it should be 'sale item' because 'sales' seems to be preferred in English for things involving at least potentially an arbitrary number of individual sales which is not usually the case with a single item.

EDIT 1: And if it's not a single item I'm referring to, but rather a 'model' of individual items, thus an abstract collection of potential things, is it correct to say 'sales item' then? For example, as in 'The shops's sales items encompass the freshly released processor (model) CPX'.

EDIT 2: This question is not about the ambiguity of 'sale' or 'on sale' or the on-sale–for-sale dilemma. I ask whether it's OK to say 'sales item' for a particular item being up for sale (regardless of context) and more importantly, if it can be reduced to 'sale item'. Why should I reduce? Because it's economical, and, above all, one and the same item is only sold once, usually. Whereas, for example, the term 'sales tax' covers an unspecified number of sales.

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  • Google 2-grams indicate strongly that while 'sales item' and 'sale item' are both widely used, the variant with the singular-form attributive noun is far more idiomatic. This is doubtless partly for the reason you mention, but also because the singular-form attributive is the default. See Cerberus's answer at When are attributive nouns plural?
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Dec 12 at 19:18
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    "sale item" sounds to me like an item that's on sale, which means it's being sold at a discounted price, not an item being sold.
    – Barmar
    Commented Dec 12 at 20:20
  • But why is that? I surmise it's because 'sale' has that ambiguity (see my comment below) of meaning both 'an act/ process of selling sth.' and 'an occasion when a shop or business sells its products at a lower price than usual'.
    – Peterש
    Commented Dec 12 at 20:32

2 Answers 2

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Question: In reference to any single item offered for purchase, should I say 'sale item' or 'sales item' ?

Answer: item for sale, to avoid any issues re a single item.

sale item (or sales items) can be understood as something discounted because it is on sale, being sold at a lower price than usual.

If you see sales items, it would generally be understood as items on sale or for sale. But in a shop (store), either for or on would be used.

The main differentiator in English in a "front-facing" usage in a store for example: is for versus on.

Items on sale
Items for sale

So, here: 'The shops's sales items encompass the newly released processor (model) CPX'. would mean the products for sale, since generally, one doesn't offer products at a discount that are newly released.

  • 'The shops's sales items encompass the newly released processor (model) CPX' [for sale]

Compare:

  • 'The shops's sales items encompass the older processor CPX models' [can mean: on sale]

No ambiguity:

'The shops's for-sale items encompass the newly released processor (model) CPX'

'The shops's on-sale items encompass the older CPX processor models'

The mansion is for sale. Sale prices for real estate can be reduced but real estate is never "on sale". Real estate has a reduced price or price reduced.

Sign: Price Reduced

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  • I agree that 'sale' and 'on sale' are ambiguous, respectively. Indeed, these ambiguities are problematic a facet of English, in my opinion. 'On sale' means both 'offered for purchase' and 'offered for purchase at an unusually low price'. '(Up) for sale' is synonymous to 'on sale' (first sense!), and is often used for a single sale of a non-commercial object. You hardly address my initial questions though.
    – Peterש
    Commented Dec 12 at 20:26
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    Yes; the question itself needs correcting. Not sure about the DVs. Frame challenges may be the correct option.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Dec 12 at 23:28
  • @Peterש All that is irrelevant. The idea is one item for sale in a shop. Not real estate.
    – Lambie
    Commented Dec 13 at 1:21
  • @Peterש Incredible. I recall there being only the comment re the mansion under my question. Now, I see there is another one but that it does not come at the end of the comments but at the beginning. Usually added comments come at the end. Somehow your second comment comes at the beginning. Hmm. My answer is now amended.
    – Lambie
    Commented Dec 13 at 15:41
  • @Lambie: The gist of your answer seems to be that there is, in English, a for-sale–on-sale semantic dichotomy in shop speech, and also, maybe to a lesser extent, in general speech. I would agree with that. Note though that my initial question is not about ambiguity, but grammatical number.
    – Peterש
    Commented Dec 14 at 18:07
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Lambie's answer covers the ambiguity, but since the example sentence has a market-journalism leaning, I would say that the common jargon choice would be offerings.

"The shop's offerings encompass [...]"

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  • This does not address OP's question closely enough (Lambie's suggestion, not offered by OP, is close to the original). 'Offerings' is a reasonable 'comment'.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Dec 13 at 19:03
  • I agree, but it does at least address the OP's underlying uncertainty about the construction for the envisioned purpose.
    – Yorik
    Commented Dec 13 at 19:09
  • It would do so as a 'comment'.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Dec 13 at 19:16
  • Frame challenges and XY problems are acceptable as answers.
    – Yorik
    Commented Dec 13 at 19:18
  • Certainly, but it is also acceptable for contributors to decide on when suggested workarounds are more or less idiomatic. There are many millions of hits in a search for "items for sale", 32 000 in a search for "the shop's offerings".
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Dec 14 at 16:14

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