Other forms: haggling, haggled, haggles
To haggle is to argue the price down at a market stall. Haggle over the price, haggle him down, no haggling.
It is expected in some markets and rude in others, and knowing which is which is most of travelling well. It always concerns price rather than terms. Note haggling; and that haggle first meant to hack or chop unevenly — the sense of arguing about price came about 1600, presumably from the idea of cutting a figure down.
1verbhaggleTo argue the price down.
“At the market, we haggled with the seller until he dropped the price of the rug.”
haggle is a bargaining.
Also accepted in games: bargain
Haggle is a frequentative of the Middle English haggen, to chop, a variant of hack. Cutting the price down keeps the original image exactly.
Middle English
haggen — to chop
English, today
haggle
Built from
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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA