bargaining

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of discussing terms back and forth to reach an agreement, especially about price or conditions.

   Weeks of bargaining between the union and management produced a new contract.

   Successful bargaining requires knowing when to walk away from the table.

   Similarnegotiation, haggling

   Note

   Usually a mass noun for the whole process, as in weeks of bargaining, but it can be counted when separate episodes are meant. Winston Churchill's Marlborough: His Life and Times (1934) lists "hagglings, bargainings, and blackmailings". There the plural turns the activity into a series of distinct deals, set beside its less respectable neighbors. The plural form is bargainings.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of bargain.

   The two sides are still bargaining over wages and overtime.

   Shoppers bargaining in the crowded bazaar filled the narrow lanes.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs inside the verb. After a form of be it is the participle (the two sides are still bargaining). In noun positions it is the gerund (bargaining over wages took all night). Most uses are intransitive and mean negotiating or haggling. The rarer transitive verb means trading something away for a consideration. When the word names the activity itself, it has become the noun for the act.

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