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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

wriggle.

To twist one's body to and fro with short, writhing motions; to squirm.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈɹɪɡəl/
  1. To twist one's body to and fro with short, writhing motions; to squirm.

    intransitive
    Teachers often lose their patience when children wriggle in their seats.
  2. To cause something to wriggle.

    transitive
    He was sitting on the lawn, wriggling his toes in the grass.
  3. To use crooked or devious means.

    intransitive
Where this word comes from

From wrig + -le (frequentative suffix). Compare Dutch wriggelen (“to wriggle, squirm”), Low German wriggeln (“to wriggle”). Related to Old English wrigian (“to turn, wend, hie, go move”), from Proto-Germanic *wrigōną (“to wriggle”).

noun/ˈɹɪɡəl/
  1. A wriggling movement.

Where this word comes from

From wrig + -le (frequentative suffix). Compare Dutch wriggelen (“to wriggle, squirm”), Low German wriggeln (“to wriggle”). Related to Old English wrigian (“to turn, wend, hie, go move”), from Proto-Germanic *wrigōną (“to wriggle”).

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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.