Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To move back and forth with quick irregular motions: The gelatin wiggled on the plate.
- v. To move or proceed with a twisting or turning motion; wriggle: wiggled restlessly in her chair; wiggled through the crowd.
- v. To insinuate or extricate oneself by sly or subtle means: wiggled out of a social engagement.
- v. To cause to move back and forth with quick irregular motions: wiggle a loose tooth.
- v. To make (one's way, for example) by or as if by wiggling: The pitcher wiggled his way out of a jam.
- n. A wiggling movement or course.
- idiom. get a wiggle on Slang To hurry or hurry up.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To waggle; wabble; wriggle.
- n. A waggling or wriggling motion.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive, intransitive To move with irregular, back and forward or side to side motions; To shake or jiggle.
- n. A wiggling movement.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. Prov. Eng. & Colloq. U. S. To move to and fro with a quick, jerking motion; to bend rapidly, or with a wavering motion, from side to side; to wag; to squirm; to wriggle
- n. colloq. Act of wiggling; a wriggle.
WordNet 3.0
- v. move to and fro
- n. the act of wiggling
Etymologies
- Middle English wiglen, possibly from Middle Dutch or Old English (Wiktionary)
- Middle English wiglen, probably from Middle Low German wiggelen, to totter; see wegh- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
““Every deal contains a certain amount of what my son likes to call wiggle room.””
“DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, there is some so - called wiggle room as such in terms of the flexibility.”
“For though the whole fire had not been put out, a good bit of it had, and what remained smelled very largely of burnt Marsh-wiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell.”
The Silver Chair
“Laughing Squid reports that the video uses a technique called wiggle stereoscopy, which films sequences with two cameras, slightly offset from one another.”
“The new lane will be striped on Scott Street, between Oak and Fell streets, a one-block stretch that is part of what is called the wiggle bike route connecting Market Street to the Panhandle that takes cyclists on a less-than-direct path so they can avoid a grueling hill on Haight Street.”
“Lipmann extended our understanding of bioenergetics by formulating the concept of the ATP metabolic wheel and introducing his famous "wiggle" (~P) to represent the bonds of high energy phosphate derivatives.”
Otto Meyerhof and the Physiology Institute: the Birth of Modern Biochemistry
“So most builder contracts contain "wiggle" language that mentions when completion is expected, but protects the builder from liability if the delivery date isn't met sometimes for as long as two years.”
The Wall Street Journal: Recourse When Home Builder Is Delayed?
“But for obvious reasons, suicide doesn't allow this kind of wiggle room, so this rationalization fails and you're pretty much screwed.”
“On second thought, "Wiggle Dress" might also apply to the fact that one has to "wiggle" into them.”
“Mr. Lundgaard spent evenings hunched over his espresso machine, studying exemplars on YouTube and rehearsing his "wiggle," the back and forth motion of the hand pouring milk.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘wiggle’.
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movement (fast)
words describing fast action or movement
( open list, randomness, descriptive )
related:
http://www.wordnik.com...hurry, run, scamper, skip, stride, stampede, trample, scramble, dart, spring, spin, sprint and 141 more...
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movement (slow)
words describing slow action or movement
( open list, randomness, descriptive )
related:
http://www.wordnik.co...creep, crawl, plod, slouch, idle, lumber, tiptoe, bend, amble, mosey, saunter, loiter and 117 more...
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The weird, the wonderful and the plai...
Loved for their ingenuity, an exact description, or simply for the pure joy of it.
acidulous, aprosdoketon, higgledy-piggledy, lexicographical, ninja, audacious, somnabulist, shivaree, amorphous, quidnunc, glib, melancholy and 353 more...
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2nd part
prelude, ample, escalate, prototype, accession, acquisition, archives, zealot, indict, verdict, intimidating, timid and 454 more...
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CCle
all those wonderful Britsy words that end with a double consonant followed by 'le'
doddle, bobble, dibble, whiffle, waffle, diddle, piddle, jiggle, straggle, boggle, fiddle, skeedaddle and 125 more...
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The Pain of Texting
Words that are a pain in the ass to type in on a numerical keypad on a cell phone because they have consecutive letters that share the same button:
2 - ABC
3 - DEF
4 - GHI...defcon, hi, no, attitude, xylophone, on, monday, monkey, mono, dig, back, babble and 212 more...
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Cute
My boyfriend and I started this list my Junior or Senior year of High school. It hasn't been added to in a while. It was a list of words that we thought sounded universally cute or had universal as...
cupcake, doilee, mitten, kitten, squiggle, button, cheek, papoose, pupa, sleep, cookie, treat and 45 more...
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Wierd/Cool/Random words
wikiphobia, banana, tounge, rock, guitar, tuna fish, vain, puffy, wiggle, googlewhack, leap, jette and 14 more...
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Bagel and such
bagel, ogle, boggle, toggle, snuggle, wiggle, straggle, haggle, inveigle, seagull, struggle
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intueri's Words
inveigle, dolorous, archly, feckless, resplendent, concatenation, peripatetic, delightful, cookie, fey, ephemeral, effervescent and 347 more...
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What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
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Fun Words
Words that are fun to say....
gobbledygook, jings, crivens, hullabaloo, wheech, brouhaha, pizzazz, harum-scarum, namby-pamby, pussyfoot, frippery, pitter-patter and 333 more...
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strangelyrouge's Words
glockenspiel, gewgaw, jetsam, flotsam, gripe, grab, wench, whilst, betwixt, hither, thither, yonder and 1034 more...
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Twitchy
The (not always so) smoovements; scattered, oscillating, jerky, and unpredictable.
palpitation, scravel, jactitate, pounce, wobble, vibrate, undulate, didder, effleurage, flail, ague, swerve and 169 more...
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savage215's Words
pipe, yankee, knickerbocker, tennis, plasma, magma, volcano, car, truck, television, tv, word and 445 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for wiggle.
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