''wheedle'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''wheedle'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260227164232-00-⌔

wheedle - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

wheedle (third-person singular simple present wheedles, present participle wheedling, simple past and past participle wheedled)

• (ambitransitive) To cajole or attempt to persuade by flattery.
  • ✤ Synonyms: butter up, inveigle, sweet-talk; see also Thesaurus: coax
  • ✤ I’d like one of those, too, if you can wheedle him into telling you where he got it.
  • ✤ […] whether, after preventing her from being the wife of Sir Walter, he may not be wheedled and caressed at last into making her the wife of Sir William.¹
  • ✤ “Brother Peter,” he said, in a wheedling yet gravely official tone, “It’s nothing but right I should speak to you about the Three Crofts and the Manganese. The Almighty knows what I’ve got on my mind—”²
  • ✤ Anyhow, you can’t wheedle him this time. He’s as bent as I am.³
  • ✤ Though he had beaten me in every bone/He still could wheedle me to love.⁴
• (transitive) To obtain by flattery, guile, or trickery.
  • ✤ If the worſt come to the worſt,—I’ll turn my Wife to Graſs—I already have a deed of Settlement of the beſt part of her Eſtate; which I wheadl’d out of her; […]⁵
  • ✤ She tore off my cap, scratched, kicked, and buffetted me, till she had exhausted her strength, declaring, as she rested her arm, ‘that I had wheedled her husband from her.⁶
  • ✤ […] when their best resources were the flitches of bacon and measures of corn, out of which they wheedled poor serfs and bondsmen, in exchange for their prayers […]⁷

Noun

wheedle (plural wheedles)

• (archaic) A coaxing person.

Etymology

Uncertain. Perhaps continuing Middle English wedlen (“to beg, ask for alms”), from Old English wǣdlian (“to be poor, be needy, be in want, beg”), from Proto-Germanic ﹡wēþlōną (“to be in need”).

Alternatively, borrowed from German wedeln (“to wag one’s tail”), from Middle High German wedelen, a byform of Middle High German wadelen (“to wander, waver, wave, whip, stroke, flutter”), from Old High German wādalōn (“to wander, roam, rove”). In this case, it may be a doublet of waddle, or an independently formed etymological equivalent.

The ⟨wh⟩ spelling (reflecting pronunciations with/ʍ/) is apparently unetymological.

Pronunciation

• (without the wine–whine merger) IPA: /ˈʍiː.dəl/
• (wine–whine merger) IPA: /ˈwiː.dəl/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -iːdəl

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1817 (date written), [Jane Austen], Persuasion; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volume, London: John Murray, […], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC: ↩

2. 1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], Middlemarch […], volume, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book: ↩

3. a. 1911, David Graham Phillips, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

4. 1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, in Nevill Coghill, transl., The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 290: ↩

5. 1700, [William] Congreve, The Way of the World, a Comedy. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act III, scene xviii, page 51: ↩

6. 1798, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, “[Maria: or, The] Wrongs of Woman”, in W[illiam] Godwin, editor, Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […]; and G[eorge,] G[eorge] and J[ohn] Robinson, […], →OCLC: ↩

7. 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC: ↩

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