chaffering

English

Verb

chaffering

1. present participle and gerund of chaffer

Noun

chaffering (countable and uncountable, plural chafferings)

1. The act of one who chaffers.
   • 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.

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

     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?"

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

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