chaffering

plural chafferings

1. countableuncountableThe act of bargaining or haggling over a price.

   September 9, 1819, Washington Irving, letter to Henry Breevort You have put my writings into circulation, and arranged the pecuniary concerns in such a way as to save future trouble and petty chafferings about accounts, and to give the whole an independent and gentlemanlike air.

   2 more examples

   He had the practised face of a dealer also. But he was a Jew and chaffering was in his blood, and he said, "A bit stiff, isn't it? I mean without a guarantee that it's by the original maker?"

   1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 158

   The air was all smell – curry-stuff, durian, fish and flesh – and the noise was of hoicking and chaffering.

   1956, Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 115

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of chaffer