Floristry and ornamental horticulture

Entry six is o relógio do leilão, and while the object is plainly « the auction clock », the procedure it drives carries a name of its own that came out of this very trade: « a Dutch auction ». An ordinary auction climbs. Bidders raise one another, the last one standing wins, and the English vocabulary follows that movement: « to outbid », « a bidding war », « going once, going twice ». A Dutch auction does the opposite. The hand starts above any price anybody would pay and falls, and the first buyer to press the button takes the lot at whatever the hand has reached. There is exactly one bid in the round, and the winner is the one who dares to wait least. Speed is the whole point, and the name stuck because the flower markets of the Netherlands have sold this way for generations. Two things follow. The phrase has travelled far beyond flowers: in finance « a Dutch auction » is a sale whose price comes down, or settles at the lowest level that clears the whole offer. And « to knock down a lot » belongs to the rising kind: on the clock nothing is knocked down, somebody simply stops it.