Today we will look at two characters as a change. 买 (mǎi, to buy)  and 卖 (mài, to sell)

Character:  买

Traditional form: 買
Pinyin: mǎi

Meaning: to buy, purchase; bribe, persuade

Frequency: 840

Strokes: 6

Decomposition: 乛 wān (yǐ second) + 头 tóu head

Radical part: 乛 wān

Alternative forms of radical: 乙(yǐ ), 乚(yǐ ),乛

Radical meaning: second 

Stroke animation: (the strokes are drawn the direction the picture is tipping)

Etymology:  To understand this character we first need to look at the traditional form of the character:

買

By looking at early bronze version of the character we can see that it have changed very little before the latest simplification. The picture is a net over a cowry shell. In early days cowry shells where used as a sort of money.

Picture of a cowry shell

A net with goods e.g. fish is bought by giving your cowry shells as payment. There are many other suggested meanings to this. E.g with a net you can catch the cowry shells that can be used to buy things with.  To get the antonym to sell 卖, mài, we just add 十 ,shí ,ten to the top.

One easy way to remember them my teacher at the university in Beijing learned me. The character who wants to buy is having an empty roof = need to buy goods. The one who is selling is having ten items on the roof that he likes to sell.

The character have been simplified and today we are using 头 tóu meaning body and 乛 yǐ meaning second. I remember this by thinking like this: You need a second person, the seller, to be able to buy.

http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E4%B9%B0/1310046

Link to nciku usage of the character 卖 (examples, sound etc)

Example words: 

购买 gòu mǎi purchase 

买卖 mǎi mài buying and selling / business dealings 

买单 mǎi dān pay the restaurant bill 

购买者 gòu mǎi zhě purchaser 

买主 mǎi zhǔ customer 

买到 mǎi dào bought 

买通 mǎi tōng

买方市场 mǎi fāng shì chǎng buyer's market 

拍卖 pāi mài auction 

专卖 zhuān mài monopoly / exclusive right to trade 

卖方 mài fāng seller 

卖完 mài wán to be sold out 

卖国贼 mài guó zéi traitor 

义卖会 yì mài huì bazaar

卖肉者 mài ròu zhě butcher   

so after being happy with myself over being able to ask the shifu if he could replace the battery in my watch (he could), and then getting that done, I probably overpaid a bit for the service. Well, maybe a lot.  Like any American not used to negotiating, and being in a fancy department store where we're not conditioned to negotiate, I probably was not in the frame of mind to negotiate, but should have been.

I'm curious if anyone out there has specific strategies on how to bargain to get what you want.  I was aware of the Best Alternative to No Agreement (BATNA), and I probably should have had a position prior to getting the battery replaced, but again, it wasn't clear that this was the place to negotiate.  It wasn't a street corner, and it wasn't a sidewalk; this was a department store with a little side area where a vendor sold batteries and watch parts.

It's also easy to know that on the street with some dude coming up to you and trying to sell you something that you can negotiate with him, but the line is grayer around a department store. Thoughts?