A bargain. To Dicker. To chaffer.
1802. Dickering signifies all that honest conversation, preliminary to the sale of a horse, where the parties very laudably strive in a sort of gladiatorial combat of lying, cheating, and overreaching.—The Port Folio, ii. 268 n. (Phila.).
1823. You have sold your betterments. Was it cash or dicker? [Barter.]—J. F. Cooper, ‘The Pioneer,’ p. 61. (N.E.D.)
1824. The subscriber has for sale the following property which he wishes to dicker for.—Advt., Woodstock (Vt.) Observer, June 15, p. 4/5.
1830. If I can make a dicker, with him about the office, I’ll let you know.—Seba Smith, ‘Major Jack Downing,’ p. 118 (1860).
1833. A dicker’s a dicker I allays concate, when people’s upon honor, but not where they aint.—John Neal, ‘The Down Easters,’ i. 81.
1833. Mr. Van Buren found it was no use to try to dicker with me.—Id., p. 229.
1845. I had acquired quite a reputation in dickering with the thievish Italian landlords.—J. T. Headley, ‘Letters from Italy,’ p. 99. (N.E.D.)
1853. If he or his Majesty want to buy any piece goods, we are ready for a dicker.—Putnam’s Mag., i. 439/1 (April).
1854. This “truck and dicker” on the part of northern men with the black man’s inalienable rights.—Mr. Wade of Ohio, House of Repr., May 17: Cong. Globe, p. 666, App.
1856. There was Jim Smith, dickering in tax-titles and horses, and adding considerably to his gains every year in that rather unprofessional way.—Putnam’s Mag., viii. 630/2 (Dec.).
1868. I instinctively mistrust a Yankee who hez dickered away his intrest in Bunker Hill.—Daniel R. Locke, ‘Ekkoes from Kentucky,’ p. 120 (Boston).
1888. After some dickering, a style of coffin was selected.—Denver Republican, April 7 (Farmer).
1890. Had she been retained as the property of one chief her fate would have been more deplorable than any that a woman ever endures, but even this misery was intensified, for she was traded from one chief to another, in the everlasting dickering that the Indians keep up.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Following the Guidon,’ p. 224 (N.Y.).
1904. [He looks] for a result abundantly profitable in the large range for dicker which he has created.—Grover Cleveland, ‘Presidential Problems,’ p. 200.
1910. [Governor Hughes of New York] would not dicker or bargain. He would not help his bills through the Legislature by either log-rolling or patronage.—N.Y. Evening Post, Oct. 6.
