How to Use barter in a Sentence

barter

1 of 2 verb
  • Women have been made to barter their stories for their rights.
    — New York Times, 27 June 2022
  • Rather than pay for the work, the man offered to barter some beehives.
    — USA TODAY, 17 Dec. 2017
  • Prize is not redeemable for cash and may not be sold, bartered or auctioned.
    — courant.com, 20 Aug. 2017
  • Passersby will be invited to barter with the artist as part of the work.
    — Los Angeles Times, 20 Sep. 2019
  • At one point his grandfather bartered his watch to get groceries and gas.
    — Dallas Morning News, 28 Mar. 2026
  • The White House said Democrats would not barter over the debt ceiling.
    — Erin B. Logan, Los Angeles Times, 21 Apr. 2023
  • Cash money became a thing of the past, as people began to barter and share.
    — Ruth Ozeki, New York Times, 10 Nov. 2020
  • New Orleans will beg and barter their last dollar to keep the Saints.
    — Christopher Dodson, Forbes, 3 Oct. 2021
  • Years stretched to a decade of Britney having to barter for dinner.
    — Kerry Howley, Vulture, 7 Nov. 2022
  • Prize is not transferable or redeemable for cash and may not be sold, bartered or auctioned.
    — Union-Tribune Rewards, sandiegouniontribune.com, 11 May 2018
  • Prepare to barter with vendors while shopping for clothes, giftables and food.
    — Kai Oliver-Kurtin, USA TODAY, 15 Feb. 2018
  • According to the sisters, the party might come across sheep herders and barter some of their fish for lamb.
    — Britta Lokting, Washington Post, 14 June 2022
  • Women’s bodies are not commodities to be bartered for the settling of scores.
    — Brittney McNamara, Teen Vogue, 27 July 2017
  • Friends told the British press that Rowley would often search dumpsters for items to barter or sell.
    — William Booth, Anchorage Daily News, 9 July 2018
  • They were bought, bartered, borrowed, or — always a surprise — swiped from the medicine chest during a party.
    — Don Sapatkin, Philly.com, 28 Apr. 2017
  • Lundström is one of a growing number of people who are pushed to barter their labor in return for a place to stay.
    — Helen Chandler-Wilde, Fortune, 22 Nov. 2022
  • The idea of exchanging presents is not to barter goods, much less to pay people for milestones and holidays.
    — Washington Post, 4 Jan. 2021
  • Young Frederick pilfered bread from his slave master to barter for lessons from poor white children.
    — New York Times, 7 Apr. 2021
  • My travel companion gave the last of his pesos to two kids bartering quick magic tricks for cash.
    — Alexandria Misch, Los Angeles Times, 28 Sep. 2019
  • Prizes are nontransferable, and Event tickets may not be sold, bartered, or exchanged.
    — Billboard, 10 Mar. 2023
  • Meanwhile, bush meat markets still see locals bartering for the animals, both dead and alive.
    — Washington Post, 17 June 2018
  • The customer, Plank said, opened a plastic shopping bag and tried to barter with deodorant and other items.
    — Vic Ryckaert, Indianapolis Star, 14 Mar. 2018
  • He was sentenced to nine months in prison for conspiracy to take migratory birds with intent to sell or barter.
    — Karine Aigner, National Geographic, 25 July 2019
  • Using peer-to-peer services to share and barter things, from books and CDs to power tools and cars, never took off.
    — The Economist, 4 June 2020
  • Wildlife at times was used to barter for drugs, too—for example, abalone was traded for methamphetamine and sturgeon exchanged for heroin.
    — Rachel Nuwer, Scientific American, 21 Nov. 2025
  • Anyone who unlawfully captures or kills a big game animal and then sells or barters the animal is guilty of a felony.
    — Dustin Gardiner, azcentral, 27 June 2018
  • His grandmother went to the grocery twice a month, grew her own vegetables and bartered with neighbors raising chickens, cows and pigs.
    — Andrew Simmons, San Francisco Chronicle, 27 Apr. 2018
  • The act of being consistent demands you to use self-talk and negotiate and barter with yourself to keep yourself on track.
    — Rittu Sinha, Forbes, 10 Nov. 2021
  • The gang takes a trip to the secret night market, a place where supernatural creatures gather to barter and haggle.
    — Olivia McCormack, Washington Post, 26 July 2022
  • The band continues to barter in tender lyrics that somehow drop like bombs, taking a specific sadness and blowing it up.
    — Haben Kelati, Washington Post, 14 June 2023

barter

2 of 2 noun
  • The tribes use a system of barter.
  • The explorers used blankets and other supplies for barter to get food from the native people.
  • The ability to freeze fish opened new markets, and the economy moved from barter to cash.
    — Akash Kapur, Travel + Leisure, 7 Apr. 2026
  • As widespread gifting takes hold, what develops is a kind of barter system.
    — Sebastian Modak, CNT, 20 July 2017
  • Cancer is a pretty thrifty sign, so use your classic wit to barter for the foreseeable future.
    — Randon Rosenbohm, Allure, 29 May 2019
  • In its current form, the proposal would outlaw the sale, barter, or trade of wildlife furs and furbearer parts statewide.
    — Dac Collins, Outdoor Life, 5 Mar. 2026
  • As a scientist Fauci deals in facts, when so many barter in free-floating feelings.
    — Robin Givhan, Washington Post, 23 Aug. 2022
  • Yet under the current barter model, none of this can be priced, traded, or reinvested.
    — Tejpaul Bhatia, Fortune, 20 May 2026
  • In 1996, amid crippling famine, Ji tried to steal a few pieces of coal from a rail yard to barter for food.
    — Brian Murphy, BostonGlobe.com, 11 June 2018
  • With the fall of that earlier empire, coinage disappeared and barter returned.
    — Helen Andrews, National Review, 18 Dec. 2017
  • And that means everything from tuna to stamps to cigarettes has its own unique value in a trade and barter market.
    — Alexandra Cardinale, Vox, 14 Nov. 2018
  • And don’t counter with the tuition-room-and-board argument, which is barter, not compensation.
    — Los Angeles Times, 20 Dec. 2020
  • Neighbors resorted to a barter system to exchange, say, a cabbage for a bottle of soy sauce.
    — New York Times, 13 Apr. 2022
  • In colonial America, making corn whiskey was a way to earn money or barter for goods and services.
    — Alan Ashe, CNN, 7 June 2018
  • There is a market that can be reactivated through barter and not through currency.
    — Gustavo Ocando Alex, miamiherald, 12 Jan. 2018
  • Wholesale decline has continued in rural areas, where barter is now common and food scarce.
    — Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, 21 Jan. 2020
  • The organization accepted cash, food stamps, meal coupons and barter cards.
    — oregonlive, 26 Aug. 2020
  • Interestingly, cash was not the only way to pay -- barter was also employed.
    — Brenda Yenke, cleveland, 13 May 2021
  • Until the shelves are restocked, people will have find other, non-yeast baking projects, grow their own starter, barter for yeast, or just hold out for more.
    — Chase Purdy, Quartz, 25 Mar. 2020
  • And, if your community is anything like mine, there’s a vibrant barter economy.
    — Washington Post, 22 Apr. 2022
  • Magazine Marcelis acquired the pieces one by one as opportunities to barter for her own work came along.
    — Sarah Medford, WSJ, 1 Oct. 2018
  • This particular search insired Gellar and Laibow to hop on the phone and barter.
    — Colleen Leahey McKeegan, Marie Claire, 18 Apr. 2017
  • So the piece about barter is really to refute this kind of standard historical story of money.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 13 Oct. 2020
  • McCarthy has proven a man unworthy of trust, his spine bendable, his values pliable, his beliefs open to barter.
    — Los Angeles Times, 6 Jan. 2023
  • Construction work is grinding to a halt, and companies are offering real estate on soft loans or barter.
    — New York Times, 21 June 2018
  • The North has proved adept at evading sanctions and Pyongyang may have already moved more of its transactions to cash or barter.
    — Peter Baker and Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 21 Sep. 2017
  • While the art of the barter is a must, shopkeepers are gentle and inviting—a unique trait of Omani hospitality.
    — Irene S. Levine, Forbes, 16 May 2021
  • Students are taught that money is a great advance over a system of barter and that a world of money produces exactly the same outcomes as a world of barter.
    — Literary Hub, 13 May 2026
  • Meanwhile, Indonesia is looking at new palm oil markets in Africa offering barter trades with palm oil.
    — Reuters, Fortune, 12 Sep. 2017
  • Trading services for goods is an anachronism, a barter system borne out of one party’s poverty and the other’s munificence.
    — Alice Gregory, New York Times, 27 Feb. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'barter.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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