Meaning & use
lowball
Last updated
Meanings
verbtransitive or intransitiveinformal
To offer a price or give an estimate that is much lower than is fair or than you intend to pay.
Grammar: Can take an object (lowball the seller) or none (they lowballed again).
Patterns
- lowball someone
- lowball something
The buyer lowballed me by offering half the asking price.
Don't lowball the contractor; you'll get poor work.
Some firms lowball the cost to win the job and then add charges.
adjectivebefore a nouninformal
Describing an offer or estimate that is unfairly low.
Grammar: Always appears before a noun: a lowball offer.
Patterns
- a lowball offer
- a lowball estimate
She turned down the lowball offer for her car.
The company made a lowball bid to get the contract.
His lowball estimate hid the real price.
Word forms
| third person singular | lowballs |
|---|---|
| past tense | lowballed |
| past participle | lowballed |
| -ing form | lowballing |
Common combinations
- lowball offer
- The seller rejected a lowball offer.
- lowball estimate
- A lowball estimate attracted customers.
- lowball a seller
- They tried to lowball a seller in a hurry.
- lowball bid
- The lowball bid won the contract.
- get lowballed
- I got lowballed on my old phone.
Synonyms and how they differ
- undercut
- Undercut means to price lower than a competitor, which is different from offering less than a fair amount.
- underbid
- Underbid means to bid below others, while lowball suggests an unfairly low bargaining number.
- underquote
- Underquote means to give a price too low to be realistic, mostly in business.
- haggle
- Haggle means to argue over price, but lowball names the specific tactic of starting too low.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: lowball or lowboy? lowball or lowbrow?
lowball vs lowboy
A lowboy is a low chest of drawers, unrelated to price offers.
lowball vs lowbrow
Lowbrow describes simple, unrefined taste and does not relate to price.
Practice
The dealer offered only $500 for a car worth $5,000, which was clearly a ______ offer.
Choose one answer.
A lowball offer is unfairly low; generous and highball would mean too much.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “lowball”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.