Unsell vs Untell - What's the difference?

In transitive terms the difference between unsell and untell

is that unsell is to cause to appear less attractive to consumers or adherents while untell is to withdraw or retract (something told); never to have told.

unsell

English

Verb

To cause to appear less attractive to consumers or adherents.

* 1983 , Thomas C. Kinnear, Kenneth L. Bernhardt, Dynamics of marketing principles: a reader

At the same time, every effort to unsell something may also be viewed as an effort to sell something else. Those who attempt to unsell cigarette smoking are attempting to sell health...

* {{quote-news, year=2007, date=December 9, author=Robert A. Lopes; As Told To Amy Zipkin, title=A Sporting Chance, work=New York Times citation

, passage=After the meeting Bob grabbed me by the ear and told me, "Once you make the sale, shut up and don't unsell it." }}

untell

English

Verb

To withdraw or retract (something told); never to have told.

* 1607 , Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness

That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass, / To untell the days, and to redeem these hours.

* 1993 , Jack Selzer, Understanding scientific prose (page 54)

Narrative untells itself by multiplying itself into discontinuous "turns" that cannot be resolved into a continuous story.

* 1998 , Diane DuBose Brunner, Between the masks: resisting the politics of essentialism (page 29)

Trinh (1991) writes that untelling the stories of privilege and marginality is a form of displacement that takes a long time.

* 2004 , Patrick Bizzaro, More lights than one: on the fiction of Fred Chappell (page 103)

And once his story was told, it was told; there was no way to untell it, no way to make himself look good.