Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Bargaining; trading.
- noun Wordy talk and haggling.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb Present participle of
chaffer .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Humanity has altered the usual course of affairs, and by a strange kind of chaffering, but one which truly becomes a King, just when the famished peasant is willing to offer us an enhanced price for food, we are directed to offer it to him for a smaller one.
The Letters of Cassiodorus Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator Senator Cassiodorus 1872
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In the end, after three hours more of chaffering, they came to an agreement.
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Pedlers were backing their wagons to the edge of the wharf, and from the bargaining and chaffering that went on, I managed to learn the selling price of the oysters.
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When someone has a lot of labor saving devices then we expect them to do more with the free time left (like chaffering kids around etc), but what that ends up meaning is that one is moving fast so much of the time.
More Work for Mother ? Linda 2008
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Off I set to him, and after much chaffering I got our stones at 1000 pounds apiece.
Sole Music 2010
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So I armed myself with courage and patience and waited till all the merchants had landed and were gathered together, talking and chaffering about buying and selling; then I went up to the captain and asked him,
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It is a foul slope; now slippery with viscous mud, then powdery with fetid dust, dotted with graves and decaying tombs, unclean booths, gargottes and tattered tents, and frequented by women, mere bundles of unclean rags, and by men wearing the haik or burnús, a Franciscan frock, tending their squatting camels and chaffering over cattle for Gibraltar beef-eaters.
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A woman dressed like Asie could disappear, without any questions being asked, in the huge market-place, where all the rags in Paris are gathered together, where a thousand costermongers wander round, and two hundred old-clothes sellers are chaffering.
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There was its corn market down the main street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks.
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I found a picture-dealer chaffering with him over a bundle of sketches, and his little boy, already pencil in hand, lying in one corner of the room, the sun playing about his yellow hair.
The Newcomes 2006
jaime_d commented on the word chaffering
from Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution
March 6, 2011