Definition of negotiate
- Teachers are negotiating for higher salaries.
- negotiated his business deals with remarkable skill
- negotiate a treaty
- negotiate a check
- negotiate a turn
- negotiate the trip in two hours
Theme music by Joshua Stamper ©2006 New Jerusalem Music/ASCAP
The customer wanted to negotiate over the price.
She has good negotiating skills.
We negotiated a fair price.
The driver carefully negotiated the winding road.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'negotiate.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
For the first 250 years of its life, negotiate had meanings that hewed pretty closely to its Latin root, negotiari, meaning "to carry on business." Around the middle of the 19th century, though, it developed the meaning "to successfully travel along or over." Although this sense was criticized in the New York Sun in 1906 as a "barbarism creeping into the language," and Henry Fowler's 1926 A Dictionary of Modern English Usage declared that any writer who used it was "literally a barbarian," it has thrived and is now fully established.
contrive, engineer, finagle, finesse, frame, machinate, maneuver, manipulate, mastermind, wangle;
blow, bobble, botch, bungle, butcher, flub, fumble, gum (up), louse up, mangle, mess (up), mishandle, muff;
arrange, concert, conclude, hammer out, work out;
angle (for), compass, intrigue, plot, scheme;
brew, concoct, cook (up), hatch;
captain, command, conduct, direct, handle, manage, quarterback, run;
: to discuss something formally in order to make an agreement
: to agree on (something) by formally discussing it
: to get over, through, or around (something) successfully
See words that rhyme with negotiate Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for negotiate Spanish Central: Translation of negotiate Nglish: Translation of negotiate for Spanish speakers Britannica English: Translation of negotiate for Arabic speakers
What made you want to look up negotiate? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).
Odd Habits and Quirks Quiz
Test your visual vocabulary with our 10-question challenge!
TAKE THE QUIZTest Your Knowledge - and learn some interesting things along the way.
TAKE THE QUIZ