higgler

plural higglers

1. archaicAn itinerant trader, especially one dealing in dairy produce and poultry.

   'I don't quite like my children going away from home,' said the higgler.

   1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume I, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC

   3 more examples

   He was, besides, the best sacrifice the higgler could make, as he had supplied him with no game since; and by this means the witness had an opportunity of screening his better customers:

   1749, Henry Fielding, chapter X, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book III

   Barter’d for game from chace or warren won, / Yon cask holds moonlight, run when moon was none; / And late-snatch’d spoils lie stow’d in hutch apart, / To wait the associate higgler’s evening cart.

   1809, [Walter Scott], “Fragments, which Originally Appeared in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809. The Poacher.”, in The Bridal of Triermain, or The Vale of St John. In Three Cantos, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for John Ballantyne and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; and Gale, Curtis, and Fenner; […], published 1813, →OCLC, pages 225–226

   [E]very poulterer in the neighbourhood had repeatedly refused her custom […] so that her only means of procuring poultry was of the higglers: their fowls, she found out, were either so ill fed, or of such an enormous age, that there was no gravy to follow the knife […]

   1828, J[ohn] T[homas] Smith, Nollekens and His Times, Century Hutchinson, published 1986, page 64

   Synonyms: wrangler

2. A person who haggles or negotiates for lower prices.

   Synonyms: haggler, wrangler

3. JamaicaA seller of any kind of small produce or wares; a huckster.