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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

finagle.

To obtain, arrange, or achieve by indirect, complicated and/or intensive efforts.

7 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/fɪˈneɪ.ɡəl/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. To obtain, arrange, or achieve by indirect, complicated and/or intensive efforts.

    transitive
    finagle a day off work
  2. To obtain, arrange, or achieve by deceitful methods, by trickery.

    transitive
    finagled his way out of a ticket by pretending to be on the way to a funeral, distraught
  3. To cheat or swindle; to use crafty, deceitful methods. (often with "out of" preceding the object)

    ambitransitive
    shady stockbrokers who finagle their clients out of fortunes.
Where this word comes from

Americanism from the 1920s, perhaps combining an alteration of fainaigue (“to renege”) with the suffix + -le (“frequentative”), possibly influenced by inveigle; compare haggle.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.