horsetrading
horsetrading noun: informal negotiating, especially when complex or clever in nature. Also the present participle and gerund of horsetrade.
Noun
horsetrading (uncountable)
- Informal negotiating, especially when complex or clever in nature.
- Next Wednesday, four women and 15 men on the Crown Nominations Commission will gather for two days of prayer and horsetrading to replace Rowan Williams as archbishop of Canterbury.2012 September 20, Andrew Brown, “Archbishop of Canterbury succession race begins in earnest”, in The Guardian (online)
- It will still be weeks before the new Italian parliament is seated and a new government is formed, leaving plenty of time for political machinations and horse trading in a coalition with major differences.2022 September 25, Jason Horowitz, “Giorgia Meloni Wins Voting in Italy, in Breakthrough for Europe’s Hard Right”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
Also used as
horsetrading is also the present participle and gerund of horsetrade.
Forms of horsetrading
| alternative form | horse trading |
|---|---|
| alternative form | horse-trading |
Origin of horsetrading
From horse + trading.
Words formed from horsetrading
Questions about horsetrading
- What does horsetrading mean?
- Horsetrading means informal negotiating, especially when complex or clever in nature.
- What part of speech is horsetrading?
- Horsetrading is a noun.
Words near horsetrading in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: horsetrading (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-horsetrading.ogg.
Cite this entry: “horsetrading.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/horsetrading. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.