| 释义 |
▪ I. higgle, v.|ˈhɪg(ə)l|
Also 8 higle.
[app. related to haggle, with the vowel-modification which often expresses less noisy or lighter action.]
1. intr. To cavil or dispute as to terms; to stickle; esp. to strive for petty advantages in bargaining; to chaffer. Cf. haggle 2.
1633T. Adams Exp. 2 Peter ii. 12 Either he higgles with some hollow reservation, or lispeth with some faltering equivocation. 1655Fuller Ch. Hist. vi. i. 278 We will not higgle with so frank a chapman for a few months under or over. 1672Shadwell Miser i. Wks. 1720 III. 13 He has been higling with a fellow, above half an hour this morning, about five Coney-skins he sold him. 1800M. Edgeworth The Will (1832) 99 He would not..stand to higgle with me for the price of a horse. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) IV. 380 He is a disputant, and higgles over an argument.
2. To carry on the trade of a higgler (sense 2); ‘to go selling provisions from door to door’ (J.).
1790, etc. [see higgling vbl. n. 2].
b. trans. To buy and fatten up for the market. local. (Cf. higgler 2 b.)
a1825Forby Voc. E. Anglia s.v., The poor often talk of ‘higgling up a pig’; i.e. buying and fattening it up.
c. (See quot.)
1866G. A. Sala in N. & Q. 3rd Ser. IX. 318/2 When A knowing or hoping that figs will be soon inquired for, buys up all the figs in the market he higgles; but when A keeps a grocer's shop and asks B eightpence for a pound of figs and B offers him sixpence, then B haggles.
▪ II. higgle, n.|ˈhɪg(ə)l|
[f. the vb.]
The adjusting of prices so that demand and supply are equal.
1908Daily Chron. 5 Dec. 4/6 If they were abolished altogether the ‘higgle of the market’ would level freights correspondingly down. |