haggle

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.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈhæɡəl/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (General Australian):

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• Rhymes: -æɡəl

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.

   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:

     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)
   • 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

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

   • 1884 December 10, Mark Twain , The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) , London: Chatto & Windus, , →OCLC:

     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.

• (to argue for a better deal): bargain