dicker
1 Americanverb (used without object)
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to deal, swap, or trade with petty bargaining; bargain; haggle.
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to barter.
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to try to arrange matters by mutual bargaining.
They dickered for hours over some of the finer points of the contract.
noun
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a petty bargain.
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a barter or swap.
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an item or goods bartered or swapped.
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a deal, especially a political deal.
noun
verb
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to trade (goods) by bargaining; barter
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(intr) to negotiate a political deal
noun
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a petty bargain or barter
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the item or items bargained or bartered
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a political deal or bargain
Other Word Forms
Conjugated Forms
Present
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have dickeredperfect
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has dickeredperfect 3rd person singular
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have been dickeringperfect progressive
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are dickeringprogressive
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has been dickeringperfect progressive 3rd person singular
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am dickeringprogressive 1st person singular
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dickeringparticiple
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is dickeringprogressive 3rd person singular
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dickerssingular 3rd person
Past
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had dickeredperfect
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were dickeringprogressive plural
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had been dickeringperfect progressive
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dickeredsimple
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was dickeringprogressive singular
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dickeredparticiple
Future
Etymology
Origin of dicker1
An Americanism dating back to 1795–1805; perhaps verb use of dicker 2
Origin of dicker2
First recorded in 1225–75; Middle English diker, deker, from Old French dacre and Medieval Latin dikeria, dacra; ultimately from Latin decuria decury
Explanation
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."
Vocabulary lists containing dicker
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
