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haggle

- 6 dictionary results

hag⋅gle

[hag-uhl] verb, -gled, -gling, noun
–verb (used without object)
1. to bargain in a petty, quibbling, and often contentious manner: They spent hours haggling over the price of fish.
2. to wrangle, dispute, or cavil: The senators haggled interminably over the proposed bill.
–verb (used with object)
3. to mangle in cutting; hack.
4. to settle on by haggling.
5. Archaic. to harass with wrangling or haggling.
–noun
6. the act of haggling; wrangle or dispute over terms.

Origin:
1275–1325; ME haggen to cut, chop (< ON hǫggva to hew ) + -le


haggler, noun
hag·gle   (hāg'əl)   
v.   hag·gled, hag·gling, hag·gles

v.   intr.
  1. To bargain, as over the price of something; dicker: "He preferred to be overcharged than to haggle" (W. Somerset Maugham).
  2. To argue in an attempt to come to terms.
v.   tr.
  1. To cut (something) in a crude, unskillful manner; hack.
  2. Archaic To harass or worry by wrangling.
n.  An instance of bargaining or arguing.

[Frequentative of dialectal hag, to chop, hack, from Middle English haggen, from Old Norse höggva; see kau- in Indo-European roots.]
hag'gler n.

Haggle

Hag"gle\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Haggled; p. pr. & vb. n. Haggling.] [Freq. of Scot. hag, E. hack. See Hack to cut.] To cut roughly or hack; to cut into small pieces; to notch or cut in an unskillful manner; to make rough or mangle by cutting; as, a boy haggles a stick of wood.

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

Haggle

Hag"gle\, v. i. To be difficult in bargaining; to stick at small matters; to chaffer; to higgle.

Royalty and science never haggled about the value of blood. --Walpole.

Haggle

Hag"gle\, n. The act or process of haggling. --Carlyle.
Language Translation for : haggle
Spanish: regatear; discutir,
German: feilschen,
Japanese: 値切る

haggle 
1577, "to cut unevenly" (implied in haggler), freq. of haggen "to chop" (see hack (1)). Sense of "argue about price" first recorded 1602, probably from notion of chopping away.
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