Haggle

verb

verb ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    an instance of intense argument (as in bargaining) wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To argue for a better deal, especially over prices with a seller. intransitive

    "I haggled for a better price because the original price was too high."

  2. 2
    wrangle (over a price, terms of an agreement, etc.) wordnet
  3. 3
    To hack (cut crudely) transitive

    "Suffolk first died, and York, all haggled o'er, / Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped."

  4. 4
    To stick at small matters; to chaffer; to higgle.

    "June 30, 1784, Horace Walpole, letter to the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway Royalty and science never haggled about the value of blood."

Synonyms

All synonyms
bargainchafferwranglebargainbargainingbarter

Example

More examples

"Don't haggle over a small sum of money."

Etymology

1570s, "to cut unevenly" (implied in haggler), frequentative of Middle English haggen (“to chop”), variant of hacken (“to hack”), equivalent to hack + -le. Sense of "argue about price" first recorded c.1600, probably from notion of chopping away.

Related phrases

higgle-haggle

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.