"Chaffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flourishing shirts, stockings, and garments of every kind, mentionable and unmentionable, in the faces of the gaping loafers below. Sometimes a particular "lot" will attract the attention of a spectator, and he will chaffer about it for a while; but the sales do not often appear to be very brisk. The people one sees in these places are very characteristic of the Bowery. Many of them are what the police call "hard cases,"—men, with coarse, bulldog features, their mustaches trimmed very close, and dyed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the squirrels frisk And chaffer in the grassy lane; And all the while I mark your voice Breaking with ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... points as sharp as a needle. Other arms had they none, for they were running and crafty. "Welcome, English!" they said,—these words they had learned from the traders 760 Touching at times on the coast, to barter, and chaffer for peltries.[47] Then in their native tongue they began to parley with Standish, Through his guide and interpreter, Hoborook, friend of the white man, Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for muskets and powder, Kept ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... and bracken and ling Gladden my heart as it beats all aglow In a brotherhood true with each living thing, From the crimson-tipped bee, and the chaffer slow, And the small lithe lizard, with jewelled eye, To the lark that has lost herself ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... the stuffy room with its guttering candles and its Chameleon-colored ark-curtain was the pivot of their barren lives. Joy came to bear to it the offering of its thanksgiving and to vow sixpenny bits to the Lord, prosperity came in a high hat to chaffer for the holy privileges, and grief came with rent garments to lament the beloved dead and glorify ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... "but you see, my friend, the army hasn't got me. And I have got you! But let us drop talking platitudes," he went on. "I'm no great hand at driving a bargain, Desmond—few army men are, you know—so I won't even attempt to chaffer with you. I shall tell you straight out what I am ready to offer. You were given the job of breaking ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... the city; keep a shop, deal in, employ one's capital in. trade with, deal with, have dealings with; transact business with, do business with; open an account with, keep an account with. bargain; drive a bargain, make a bargain; negotiate, bid for; haggle, higgle[obs3]; dicker [U.S.]; chaffer, huckster, cheapen, beat down; stickle, stickle for; out bid, under bid; ask, charge; strike a bargain &c. (contract) 769. speculate, give a sprat to catch a herring; buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, buy low and sell high; corner ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... loike me to chaffer much with neighbour Joplin, for she was but a bad 'un,—pretty fease, too. She lived agin the wogh [Anglice, wall] yonder, where you ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the dead who breed. Crush the ripe fruit, and cast it aside, Yet its seeds shall fructify, And trees rise where your huts were standing. But the little people are ignorant, They chaffer, and swarm. They gnaw like rats, And the foundations of the ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... department stores are worse jumbles even than the English department stores. When there is a special sale under way the bargain counters are rigged up on the sidewalks. There, in the open air, buyer and seller will chaffer and bicker, and wrangle and quarrel, and kiss and make up again—for all the world to see. One of the free sights of Paris is a frugal Frenchman, with his face extensively haired over, pawing like a Skye terrier through a heap of ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb |
