haggle

verb
/ˈhæɡəl/UK

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.

  1. derived from haggen

Definitions

  1. To argue for a better deal, especially over prices with a seller.

    • I haggled for a better price because the original price was too high.
    • ‘I am pretty useless at haggling. Haggling means asking the seller to sell stuff below the asking price.’
    • Last month, while officials from Washington and Beijing were haggling over whether to roll back tariffs that had brought their trade to a standstill, Chinese companies announced plans to invest about $4.7 billion in Brazil.
  2. To hack (cut crudely)

    • Suffolk first died, and York, all haggled o'er, / Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped.
    • I catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had supper. Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast.
  3. To stick at small matters

    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.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for haggle. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA