haggle
UK/ˈhæɡəl/
haggle verb: to argue for a better deal, especially over prices between a buyer and seller.
Verb
haggle (third-person singular simple present haggles, present participle haggling, simple past and past participle haggled)
- 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.
- ‘I am pretty useless at haggling. Haggling means asking the seller to sell stuff below the asking price.’2020, Abi Daré, The Girl With The Louding Voice, Sceptre, page 184
- To hack (cut crudely)
- Suffolk first died, and York, all haggled o'er, / Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped.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[ward] Blount...
- 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.1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC
- 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.
- June 30, 1784, Horace Walpole, letter to the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway
haggle meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
haggle in Tamil
- to argue for a better deal
- பேரம் பேசு pēram pēcu
haggle in Urdu
- مول بھاؤ کرنا
haggle in Bengali
- দরকষাকষি করা
haggle in Malayalam
- to haggle
- പേശുക pēśuka
More languagesFewer languages
- haggle in Kannada
- ಕೊಸರಾಡು, ಚೌಕಾಸಿ ಮಾಡು, ಜುಗ್ಗಾಡು
- haggle in Arabic
- سَاوَمَ sāwama
- haggle in Malay
- tawar-menawar
- haggle in Indonesian
- tawar
- haggle in Thai
- ต่อรอง dtɔ̀ɔ-rɔɔng
- haggle in Vietnamese
- mặc cả
Examples of haggle in a sentence
- Start to haggle and you’ll realise they’re speaking not only French but something earthier.
- 'The business of water transportation knows no haggling and wraggling', said the boatman blatantly.
- Prices are slightly higher than average, but on pilgrimless nights you can usually haggle advantageously.
Synonyms of haggle
Forms of haggle
| third-person singular present | haggles |
|---|---|
| present participle | haggling |
| past participle | haggled |
| past | haggled |
Origin of 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.
Words formed from haggle
Words that rhyme with haggle
Questions about haggle
- What does haggle mean?
- Haggle means to argue for a better deal, especially over prices between a buyer and seller.
- What is haggle in Tamil?
- Haggle in Tamil is பேரம் பேசு (pēram pēcu). See Haggle meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is haggle?
- Haggle is a verb.
- How do you pronounce haggle?
- Haggle is pronounced /ˈhæɡəl/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of haggle?
- The past tense of haggle is haggled.
Words near haggle in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: haggle (page history and authors); haggle (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Haggle (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); പേശുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); haggle (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-haggle.ogg, en-au-haggle.ogg.
Cite this entry: “haggle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/haggle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.