1. barter - Noun
2. barter - Verb
3. Barter - Proper noun
To traffic or trade, by exchanging one commodity for another, in distinction from a sale and purchase, in which money is paid for the commodities transferred; to truck.
To trade or exchange in the way of barter; to exchange (frequently for an unworthy consideration); to traffic; to truck; -- sometimes followed by away; as, to barter away goods or honor.
The act or practice of trafficking by exchange of commodities; an exchange of goods.
The thing given in exchange.
Source: Webster's dictionaryAll government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. Edmund Burke
The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals. Adam Smith
When old men decided to barter young men for pride and profit, the transaction was called war. Len Deighton
The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, ... since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted. There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language. Paul Valéry
But the fact that the word "chattel" has survived as the inclusive legal term for all movable goods, points, not merely to the great importance of cattle in primitive times, but to the importance of the notion of sale or barter in generating the institution of property. Edward Jenks
The reason that economic textbooks now begin with imaginary villages is because it has been impossible to talk about real ones. Even some economists have been forced to admit that Smith's Land of Barter doesn't really exist. The question is why the myth is perpetuated anyway. David Graeber