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lowball

/ˌloʊˈbɔl/
IPA guide

Other forms: lowballing

When you lowball someone, you attempt to buy something from them by offering a lot less money than it's actually worth. If you want to buy a car that you can't quite afford, you might decide to lowball.

Whether you estimate something's value, make an offer to buy something, or try to hire a worker for a very small salary, you lowball. The word works as an adjective too: "He was selling fancy lemonade for two dollars a cup, but I made him a lowball offer, since I only had a quarter in my pocket." This informal slang word was coined in the US, from a railroad term.

Definitions of lowball
  1. verb
    make a deliberately low estimate
    “The construction company wanted the contract badly and lowballed
    synonyms: underestimate
    see moresee less
    type of:
    approximate, estimate, gauge, guess, judge
    judge tentatively or form an estimate of (quantities or time)
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