How to Use hard sell in a Sentence

hard sell

noun
  • Such an expensive project will be a hard sell during these slow economic times.
  • But that would be a hard sell to me.
    — William Mersey, New York Daily News, 8 Apr. 2026
  • Before the hard sell comes a pause.
    — Jack Lang, New York Times, 28 May 2026
  • So this was already a hard sell.
    — Ahmir “questlove” Thompson, Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2025
  • Green beans aren't usually a hard sell.
    — Maggie Meyer Glisan, Better Homes & Gardens, 8 Apr. 2026
  • That, plus just one Quad 1 win, makes the Huskers a hard sell.
    — Eden Laase, New York Times, 11 Mar. 2026
  • Strief, Payton and the Broncos put the hard sell on.
    — Parker Gabriel, Denver Post, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Trump’s effort to tie Democrats to spikes in the price of health insurance is a hard sell.
    — Juan Williams, Washington Post, 7 Jan. 2026
  • The hard sell of battery projects can also strengthen pushback.
    — Bloomberg, Oc Register, 23 Apr. 2026
  • Wine trends also have favored boozy and bracing styles, a hard sell for folks used to sipping hard seltzers at the club.
    — ABC News, 22 June 2026
  • Was this initiative a hard sell to league officials and team owners?
    — Cynthia Littleton, Variety, 5 Feb. 2026
  • Even with the former strongman now sitting in a US jail, that’s a hard sell.
    — Peter Millard, Bloomberg, 12 Mar. 2026
  • Real estate agents whipped out their phones to put a hard sell on anything east of I-95.
    — Pat Beall, Sun Sentinel, 8 May 2026
  • Kemsley says the conversations have not been a hard sell.
    — Lily Moayeri, Rolling Stone, 15 June 2026
  • Retail becomes a continuation of place rather than a hard sell at the exit door.
    — Kate Hardcastle, Forbes.com, 16 Jan. 2026
  • That, school leaders say, is a hard sell, despite the state offering to reimburse districts for the cost.
    — Miranda Dunlap, jsonline.com, 3 Dec. 2025
  • But that’s a hard sell when a player has missed more than half the season and still hasn’t recovered from his original injury.
    — Julia Poe, Chicago Tribune, 2 Jan. 2026
  • Paris doesn’t need a hard sell, but most visitors waste precious time bouncing between neighborhoods without a plan.
    — Lauren Schuster, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 22 Apr. 2026
  • This game is a hard sell for a myriad of reasons, but there was always the chance of Activision pulling a second hat-trick this year.
    — Fran J. Ruiz, Rolling Stone, 18 Nov. 2025
  • For some, the hard sell on social media isn’t right at all because no one is going to immediately buy that product during a scroll session.
    — Keith Bendes, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Plus, Marathon will cater to harder-core players rather than ARC, generally speaking, so switching over may be a hard sell.
    — Paul Tassi, Forbes.com, 24 Jan. 2026
  • Deck shamelessly barges into a victim’s hospital room and offers to represent him in any pending litigation, giving him the hard sell.
    — Dave Nemetz, TVLine, 15 Aug. 2025
  • There are hard sells, and then there’s what Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona gave first baseman Nathaniel Lowe.
    — C. Trent Rosecrans, New York Times, 14 Feb. 2026
  • Tariffs could be 'hard sell' in election year How obedient will the congressional GOP be to Trump in an election year?
    — Justin Papp, CNBC, 23 Feb. 2026
  • Compared with protein, which lends itself to narratives of growth—more grams, more gains—fibre is a bit of a hard sell, likelier to be espoused by women in sensible shoes than by fitness junkies on Twitch.
    — Hannah Goldfield, New Yorker, 29 June 2026
  • Eggnog is a hard sell because most people have only had the bad kind, those boring and occasionally gross cartons that line the dairy section of the supermarket every December.
    — Jeremy Repanich, Robb Report, 13 Dec. 2025
  • And for many anthropologists, earlier hominins with those capabilities—once considered uniquely human—are a hard sell.
    — ArsTechnica, 25 June 2026
  • That turn is notable in a country that has prided itself on keeping the far right at the margins, and whose own history of colonization and emigration has generally made such politics a hard sell.
    — Donathan L. Brown, The Conversation, 24 June 2026
  • And drug literature can be a hard sell for some, especially if the reader feels anxious about their own coolness, and develops a sort of you-won’t-impress-me-so-there carapace in advance as a form of self-protection.
    — Literary Hub, 25 June 2026
  • Yet public dissatisfaction over migration and political pressure from far-right gains throughout Europe make Allen’s proposals a hard sell.
    — Elizabeth Flock, New Yorker, 23 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hard sell.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: