Word.ws English Dictionary

drive a hard bargain

drive a hard bargain verb: to negotiate forcefully.

Verb

drive a hard bargain (third-person singular simple present drives a hard bargain, present participle driving a hard bargain, simple past drove a hard bargain, past participle driven a hard bargain)

  1. (idiomatic) To negotiate forcefully.
    • Both the G.W.R. and the L.S.W.R. had to pay dearly for the privilege of entering the Royal Borough, for the Prince Consort drove a hard bargain with each.1949 September and October, “Notes and News: The Windsor Centenary”, in Railway Magazine, page 340

Forms of drive a hard bargain

third-person singular presentdrives a hard bargain
present participledriving a hard bargain
pastdrove a hard bargain
past participledriven a hard bargain

Questions about drive a hard bargain

What does drive a hard bargain mean?
Drive a hard bargain means to negotiate forcefully.
What part of speech is drive a hard bargain?
Drive a hard bargain is a verb.
What is the past tense of drive a hard bargain?
The past tense of drive a hard bargain is drove a hard bargain.

Words near drive a hard bargain in the dictionary

  1. drivability
  2. drivable
  3. drive
  4. drive a coach and horses through
  5. drive a coach and six through
  6. drive a hard bargain
  7. drive a nail in someone's coffin
  8. drive a nail where it will go
  9. drive a stake through its heart
  10. drive a truck through something
  11. drive a wedge

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drive a hard bargain (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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