E-tail is selling goods or services to customers over the internet, instead of from a street shop you walk into. Writers sometimes call the company itself “an e-tail,” as if it were one shop. Though actually, in real talk e-tail is more often the kind of selling — online retail as a business — and people name the company an e-tailer. You will hear e-commerce much more; that is the everyday, wider word for almost the same idea. E-tail sounds a little office-and-newspaper, not like something a friend would say over lunch.