wholesale

Wholesale is a Middle English compound: whole + sale. The word appeared in the fifteenth century. A wholesale purchase was a purchase of a whole lot — an entire shipment, an entire crop, an entire production run. The wholesaler bought everything and then sold portions to retailers, who sold individual items to consumers. The supply chain has three links: producer, wholesaler, retailer. The wholesaler is the middle link.

The word 'whole' in wholesale has an older meaning than 'complete.' In Middle English, 'whole' could mean 'in bulk, in large quantities.' A whole sale was a bulk sale. The opposite was a 'retail' sale — from the Old French retaillier (to cut again, to cut into pieces). Wholesale is buying the bolt of cloth. Retail is cutting it into dress lengths. The metaphor is textile, and it is precise.

Costco, Sam's Club, and other warehouse retailers have blurred the wholesale-retail boundary. A consumer who buys thirty-six rolls of toilet paper is performing a quasi-wholesale act — purchasing in bulk at a lower unit price. The 'wholesale club' brings wholesale quantities to retail customers. The word's boundary between bulk and individual has become a marketing concept.

In figurative English, 'wholesale' means 'on a large, indiscriminate scale.' Wholesale destruction. Wholesale changes. Wholesale slaughter. The word that meant 'buying everything at once' now means 'doing anything on a massive, undiscriminating scale.' The commercial meaning generated the figurative one: doing something wholesale means doing it in bulk.