A. On top of that, he's super smart and intellectual. He's driven and a real go-getter like you!

B. OK, I'm sold, when do I get to meet him?

A.I don't know, as soon as you're free.

My comments:

In other words, I buy it – you’ve convinced me of his value.

This phrase “I’m sold” must have been inspired by the everyday transaction of buying and selling in the marketplace. When a seller makes his sales pitch, i.e. saying a lot of good things about his products, you evaluate his words while inspecting the goods – to see if the quality of the products matches the salesman’s good words. If you’re convinced, you say: “OK, I buy it.”

That’s when, in other words, “you’re sold”.

Metaphorically, in the above example, Person B is convinced of the good words Person A has to say about the third person who’s “super smart”, “intellectual”, “driven”, “a real go-getter like you” and so forth. And so he says “OK, I’m sold, when do I get to meet him?”

Otherwise, he would’ve said: “I don’t buy it - I don’t believe he’s as good as you say he is. Don’t bother bringing him here. I don’t want to meet him.”

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.