Wiktionary

haggle

English

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WOTD – 25 September 2010

Etymology

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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]

Pronunciation

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Verb

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haggle (third-person singular simple present haggles, present participle haggling, simple past and past participle haggled)

  1. (intransitive) To argue for a better deal, especially over prices between a buyer and seller.
    I haggled for a better price because the original price was too high.
    • 2020, Abi Daré, The Girl With The Louding Voice, Sceptre, page 184:
      ‘I am pretty useless at haggling. Haggling means asking the seller to sell stuff below the asking price.’
    • 2025 June 20, Meaghan Tobin, “Chinese Companies Set Their Sights on Brazil”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      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. (transitive) To hack (cut crudely)
  3. 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

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Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “haggle”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
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