Word of the Day

: July 6, 2016

negotiate

verb nih-GOH-shee-ayt

What It Means

1 : to confer with another so as to arrive at the settlement of some matter; also : to arrange for or bring about by such conferences

2 : to transfer to another by delivery or endorsement in return for equivalent value

3 : to get through, around, or over successfully

negotiate in Context

Our driver had lived on the island all her life, and was adept at negotiating the narrow, winding roads along the island's coast.

"In recent years, however, using the courts to negotiate 'fair value' has become a full-time industry for investment funds and lawyers looking for a quick score." — Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times, 7 June 2016

Did You Know?

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.