haggle

haggle

English

WOTD – 25 September 2010

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]

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈhæɡəl/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (AU)

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• Rhymes: -æɡəl

Verb

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 with a seller.
   • 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.’

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

2. (transitive) To hack (cut crudely)
   • 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act IV, scene vi]:

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

   • 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 8, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], OCLC 458431182:

     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 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

• (to argue for a better deal): wrangle

Derived terms

• haggler

Translations

to argue for a better deal

Arabic: سَاوَمَ‎ (sāwama) Armenian: սակարկել (hy) (sakarkel) Belarusian: таргавацца impf (tarhavacca) Bulgarian: пазаря се (pazarja se) Catalan: regatejar (ca) Chinese: Cantonese: 殺價, 杀价 (saat3 gaa3) Mandarin: 討價還價／讨价还价 (zh) (tǎojià-huánjià), 計較／计较 (zh) (jìjiào) Czech: smlouvat, handrkovat se, dohadovat se impf Danish: prutte (da), købslå Dutch: afdingen (nl) Esperanto: marĉandi (eo) Estonian: tingima Finnish: tinkiä (fi) French: marchander (fr) Galician: regatear (gl), relear (gl) Georgian: please add this translation if you can German: feilschen (de), (dated) markten (de), schachern (de) Greek: διαπραγματεύομαι (el) (diapragmatévomai), (colloquial) παζαρεύω (el) (pazarévo) Hungarian: alkudozik (hu) Icelandic: prútta Indonesian: tawar (id) Italian: contrattare (it), tirare sul prezzo, mercanteggiare (it) Japanese: 値切る (ねぎる, negiru), 〔値段などで〕押し問答する ([nedan nado de] oshimondou suru) Khmer: ដេញថ្លៃ (dəɲ tlay) Korean: 깎다 (ko) (kkakda) Lao: ຕໍ່ (tǭ) Macedonian: се ценка (se cenka) Malay: please add this translation if you can Mongolian: please add this translation if you can Norwegian: prute (no) Persian: چانه زدن‎ (fa) (čâne zadan) Polish: targować się (pl) Portuguese: pechinchar (pt), regatear (pt), barganhar (pt) Romanian: tocmi (ro), negocia (ro), târgui (ro), neguța (ro), țigăni (ro) Russian: торгова́ться (ru) (torgovátʹsja) Serbo-Croatian: cjenkati (sh) Slovene: barantati impf Sorbian: Lower Sorbian: wikowaś Upper Sorbian: wikować (hsb) Spanish: regatear (es) Swedish: pruta (sv), köpslå (sv) Tamil: please add this translation if you can Thai: ต่อรอง (th) (dtòr rong) Turkish: please add this translation if you can Ukrainian: торгува́тися impf (torhuvátysja) Vietnamese: mặc cả (vi) Wolof: waxaale (wo)

to stick at small matters

Bulgarian: насичам (bg) (nasičam) French: chipoter (fr) Lithuanian: leistis į smulkmenas Spanish: detener en pequeñeces (pronominal)

See also

• bargain
• negotiate

 

References

1. Douglas Harper (2001–2023), “haggle”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.