dicker

/ˈdɪkər/

/ˈdɪkə/

Other forms: dickering; dickered; dickers

To dicker is to haggle or bargain. When you buy something at a yard sale, you often have to dicker over the price.

When you dicker, you negotiate, often with some arguing or going back and forth. Your new dog walker might dicker with you over how many walks your dog needs each day, and a savvy kid will dicker with her grandmother over how many cookies she's allowed to have after lunch. The word is purely American, from the early 1800s, possibly from the old fashioned noun dicker, which was once a unit of trade that meant "a set of ten hides."

Definitions of dicker

1. verb

   negotiate the terms of an exchange
   synonyms: bargain

   types:

   chaffer, haggle, higgle, huckster

   wrangle (over a price, terms of an agreement, etc.)

   bargain down, beat down

   persuade the seller to accept a lower price

   type of:

   negociate, negotiate, talk terms

   discuss the terms of an arrangement