'Sell' originally meant 'to give' in Old English — the commercial sense of payment came later.
To give or hand over something in exchange for money; to offer goods for purchase.
From Old English 'sellan' meaning 'to give, furnish, supply, lend,' from Proto-Germanic *saljaną (to offer, give), possibly from PIE root *selh₁- (to take, seize). Remarkably, the original meaning was simply 'to give,' with no implication of receiving payment. The shift from 'give' to 'sell' occurred during the late Old English and early Middle English period as commercial life intensified and the act of giving
Gothic 'saljan' meant 'to offer a sacrifice' — the same root as English 'sell.' The semantic journey from sacred offering to commercial transaction reveals how ancient Germanic peoples conceptualized exchange: giving up something valuable, whether to the gods or to a buyer, was fundamentally the same act.