Wangle

WORD OF THE DAY

wangle / verb / WANG-gul

Definition
1: to resort to trickery or devious methods
2: to adjust or manipulate for personal or fraudulent ends
3a: to make or get by devious means
3b: finagle

Examples
“Discussions of how to wangle free shipping or discounts dovetailed with a proposition that the group start a fund-raiser for a family in need—a worthy use for money saved.”
— Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2021

The court ruled that Mr Atambayev had helped wangle the early release from prison of a mafia don, Aziz Batukayev, supposedly on compassionate grounds, using a fake diagnosis of leukemia.
—The Economist, 27 June 2020

Did You Know?
You may have noticed a striking resemblance between wangle and wrangle, both of which have a sense meaning “to obtain or finagle.”
But the two do not share a common history: wrangle is centuries older than wangle, and despite their overlap in both meaning and appearance, wangle is believed to have evolved separately by way of waggle, meaning “to move from side to side.”
Wrangle, by contrast, comes from the Old High German word ringan, meaning “to struggle.”
It’s possible, though, that wangle saved the “obtain” sense of wrangle from the brink of obsolescence—until recent decades, this usage had all but disappeared, and its revival may very well have been influenced by wangle.
We wish we could wangle conclusive evidence to support this theory, but alas!