Haggle
verb
verb ·2 syllables ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 an instance of intense argument (as in bargaining) wordnet
Verb
- 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 wrangle (over a price, terms of an agreement, etc.) wordnet
- 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 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."
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.