Other forms: negotiated, negotiating, negotiates
To negotiate is to talk back and forth with someone until you both agree, each side asking for more and each side giving a little. A union negotiating pay with management. A couple negotiating the price of a flat. Two children negotiating whose turn it is on the swing.
You negotiate WITH a person and negotiate OVER an issue, and what comes out at the end is a negotiated settlement. The thing itself can be the object: negotiate a deal, negotiate a contract, negotiate a ceasefire. There is a second, physical meaning that surprises people — to negotiate an obstacle is to get past it in one piece: negotiate a tight bend, negotiate the stairs with a suitcase, negotiate the crowd outside the station. The noun is negotiation, and it lives in the plural: the two sides are in negotiations. A negotiator does it for a living, and non-negotiable means there is nothing to discuss.
1verbnegotiateTo discuss something with someone in order to reach an agreement.~39%
“The two sides negotiated for eleven hours without a break.”
2verbbrokerTo arrange or settle something by discussion.~56%
“She negotiated a better salary before she signed anything.”
3verbsucceedTo succeed in getting past or over something difficult.~5%
“He negotiated the icy steps one at a time.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Negotiate comes from Latin negōtior, to do business or trade, from negotium, business — and negotium is nec, not, plus otium, leisure. The Romans defined business as the absence of time off. English took the word in around 1598 for haggling over terms, and later stretched it to anything you have to work your way through, which is how a driver ends up negotiating a hairpin bend.
Latin
negōtiātus
English, today
negotiate
Built from
c. 1598; Latin negōtiātus, perfect active participle of negōtior (“to do business, trade”) (see -ate), from negotium (“business”) + -ō, from nec (“not”) + otium (“leisure, ease, inactivity”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA