Meanings
- pluralplural onlychiefly HungaryThe disparity between the prices of agricultural and industrial products.
The agrarian scissors were set at an angle of 59.4% as late as 1940, and the living standard was 33% to 64% lower than it had been in 1916.
1998, Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, Nicolae Iorga: A Biography, page 3562 more examples
For a time it looked as if even ideological protests against the ruling system had been discredited. But the traditional wounds of the country were still there, and they soon began to bleed again, partly because of the stopping of emigration to America, partly because of the “agrarian scissors” which put the living standard of the people on a starvation level.
1938, Oscar Jászi, “Feudal Agrarianism in Hungary”, in Foreign Affairs, volume 16The price of wheat was down now to 7.76 gold francs per quintal, opening the “agrarian scissors” to the extraordinary angle of 70.4 per cent. […]
1956, Carlile Aylmer Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, volume 1, page 118
Origin
- Hungarianagrárolló
- Englishagrarian scissors
Primarily a calque of Hungarian agrárolló. See price scissors, scissors crisis.
More words from Hungarian
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
agrarian scissors. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/agrarian%20scissors
“agrarian scissors.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/agrarian%20scissors. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “agrarian scissors,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/agrarian%20scissors.
Source: agrarian scissors on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.