dicker

Definition

To bargain, haggle or negotiate over a sale.

Etymology

From Middle English diker (“measure of ten”), from Late Latin dacra (“a dicker”), from Latin decuria (“a ten of something”), from decem (“ten”).

Example Sentences

• "At Bouira the detachment detrained, and the balance of the journey was made in the saddle. As Tarzan was dickering at Bouira for a mount he caught a brief glimpse of a man in European clothes eying him from the doorway of a native coffeehouse, […]"
• "In the brilliant sparkle of the morning when everything that was not superlatively blue was superlatively green, I dickered with a man who was taking a party up the inlet that he should drop me off at the village I was headed for."
• "Then, the white men who penetrated to those semi-wilds were always ready to "dicker" and to "swap," and to "trade" rifles, and watches, and whatever else they might happen to possess, almost to their wives and children."