Haggister

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who argues persistently over the price of goods or the terms of a deal, pressing for a better bargain
2. A person given to bargaining hard and long over the cost of something before agreeing to any sale
3. One who bargains stubbornly, pushing back and forth over price or conditions until a settlement is reached

Etymology: Hagister, haggister and related forms are old English names for the magpie, and the word's roots run back to a Germanic bird name shared across the North Sea. Its Old English ancestor was a form of "agastrijā" in Proto-West Germanic, meaning "magpie" or "woodpecker," and the same root survives in modern Dutch "ekster," West Frisian "ekster," and German "Elster," all meaning magpie. The word reached Middle English as "haguster" or "aguster," and the "h" in the modern spelling appears to have been added later, a common pattern in English words that began without it. The bird's name is one of several Germanic words for magpie that share this root, so the word is less a single English invention than a branch of a wider family of names for a single bird. In Low German and Swabian dialects the same root still produces "Heister," "Häster," and "Ägerst," showing how the form has survived in regional speech long after it faded from standard English.