dangle
Syllables: dan·gle/ˈdæŋ.ɡəl/
dangle verb: to hang loosely with the ability to swing.
Verb
dangle (third-person singular simple present dangles, present participle dangling, simple past and past participle dangled)
- To hang loosely with the ability to swing.
- His feet are dangling in the water.
- He'd rather on a gibbet dangle / Than miss his dear delight, to wrangle.1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished...
- The action of performing a move or deke with the puck in order to get past a defender or goalie; perhaps because of the resemblance to dangling the puck on a string.
- He dangled around three players and the goalie to score.
- To hang or trail something loosely.
- I like to sit on the edge and dangle my feet in the water.
- To put forth as a possibility.
- That it happens to have been produced under the imprimatur of Michael Bay dangles the possibility of poor taste, but unfortunately, bombast and conspicuous consumption are nowhere to be found.2020 December 10, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, “The first movie inspired by the pandemic is here, and it sucks”, in The Onion AV Club, archived from the original on 21 Dec 2020
- To trail or follow around.
- To dangle at the elbow of a wench who can't make up her mind to accept the common title of wife, till she has been courted a certain number of weeks — so the old blinker, her father, says.1833, Miller's Modern Acting Drama
- Of a patient: to be positioned with the legs hanging over the edge of the bed.
- Record the time and duration of dangling, patient's pulse and respirations and patient's general tolerance of the procedure. […] The next step usually in getting the patient out of bed is sitting […]1976, R. Winifred Heyward Johnson, Douglass W. Johnson, Introduction to Nursing Care, page 139
- [P]ivot to bring the patient's legs over the side of the bed. Be Smart! Stay with the patient as he dangles.2012, Judith M. Wilkinson, Leslie S. Treas, Pocket Nursing Skills: What You Need to Know Now
- To position (a patient) in this way.
- Using proper body mechanics for dangling a patient at the side of the bed.2012, Judith M. Wilkinson, Leslie S. Treas, Pocket Nursing Skills: What You Need to Know Now
Noun
dangle (plural dangles)
- An agent of one intelligence agency or group who pretends to be interested in defecting or turning to another intelligence agency or group.
- The example of Oswald will show how the different operations of a dangle and a barium meal would work more efficiently together.2017, Nancy Howell Lee, Peter Dale Scott, Bertram Gross, Forbidden Bookshelf's Resistance in America Collection
- The action of dangling; a series of complex stick tricks and fakes in order to defeat the defender in style.
- That was a sick dangle for a great goal!
- A dangling ornament or decoration.
- So her father wrote to Mrs. Herring, and one day she arrived and turned out to be a little, lean old lady with a dark brown mole on one leathery cheek and wearing a black bonnet decorated with jet dangles, like tiny fishing rods.1941, Flora Thompson, Over to Candleford
dangle meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu
dangle in Tamil
- தொங்கு, தொங்க விடு
dangle in Urdu
- جھولنا, لٹکنا, جھلانا, لٹکانا
dangle in Bengali
- ঝুলতে থাকা
dangle in Telugu
- hang loosely
- వ్రేలాడు vrēlāḍu
More languagesFewer languages
- dangle in Malayalam
- തൂങ്ങുക tūṅṅuka
- dangle in Kannada
- ಸೋರು, ನೇಲು, ಬಳಲು, ಅಸಿ
- dangle in Sanskrit
- रम्बते rámbate
- dangle in Arabic
- تَدَلَّى tadallā, تَهَدَّلَ tahaddala, دَلَّى dallā
- dangle in Vietnamese
- treo, lủng lẳng
Examples of dangle in a sentence
- The cat was always on the prowl for bit of string or a dangling shoelace.
- Well, don't leave me dangling. Tell me what happened!
- At his back, the lockman reached up to grasp the noose dangling from the beam.
Forms of dangle
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | dangles |
| present participle | dangling |
| past participle | dangled |
| past | dangled |
| Noun | |
| plural | dangles |
Origin of dangle
Uncertain, but likely of North Germanic origin, akin to Danish dingle, dangle, Swedish dangla (“to swing about”), Norwegian dangla, perhaps via North Frisian dangeln; all possibly related to Old Norse dengja (“to hit”).
Words formed from dangle
Words that rhyme with dangle
Questions about dangle
- What does dangle mean?
- Dangle means to hang loosely with the ability to swing.
- What is dangle in Tamil?
- Dangle in Tamil is தொங்கு, தொங்க விடு. See Dangle meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is dangle?
- Dangle can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce dangle?
- Dangle is pronounced /ˈdæŋ.ɡəl/.
- What is the past tense of dangle?
- The past tense of dangle is dangled.
Words near dangle in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dangle (page history and authors); dangle (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dangle (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dangle (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); തൂങ്ങുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); dangle (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); रम्बते (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-dangle.ogg.
Cite this entry: “dangle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dangle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.