Word.ws English Dictionary

fangle

Syllables: fan·gle/ˈfæŋ.ɡəl/

fangle verb: to fashion, manufacture, invent, or create.

Verb

fangle (third-person singular simple present fangles, present participle fangling, simple past and past participle fangled)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete) To fashion, manufacture, invent, or create.
    • […]not hereby to control and new fangle the Scripture, God forbid, but to mark how corruption and apostasy crept in by degrees, and to gather up wherever we find the remaining sparks of original truth,[…]1641, John Milton, Of Prelatical Episcopacy
    • Jonathan Swift (1726), Gulliver's Travels, 1st edition: “But I have since found that the sea Yahoos are apt, like the land ones, to become new-fangled in their words, which the latter change every year; insomuch, as I remember upon each return to my own country their old dialect was so altered...
  2. (dialectal, obsolete) To trim showily; entangle; hang about.
  3. (dialectal, obsolete) To waste time; trifle.

Noun

fangle (plural fangles)

  1. (obsolete) A prop; a taking up; a new thing.
  2. Something newly fashioned; a novelty, a new fancy.
  3. A foolish innovation; a gewgaw; a trifling ornament.
  4. A conceit; whim.

Forms of fangle

Verb
third-person singular presentfangles
present participlefangling
past participlefangled
pastfangled
Noun
pluralfangles

Origin of fangle

From Middle English fangelen (verb), from fangel (“inclined to take”, adjective), from Old English *fangol, *fangel (“inclined to take”), from fōn (“to take, seize”). Compare Old English andfangol (“undertaker, contractor”), Old English underfangelnes (“undertaking, hospitality”), Middle English fangen (“to take, seize, catch”), German fangen (“to catch”). More at fang.

Back-formation from newfangled (adjective) as if new + fangle (noun). See newfangle.

Words formed from fangle

Words that rhyme with fangle

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about fangle

What does fangle mean?
Fangle means to fashion, manufacture, invent, or create.
What part of speech is fangle?
Fangle can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce fangle?
Fangle is pronounced /ˈfæŋ.ɡəl/.
What is the past tense of fangle?
The past tense of fangle is fangled.

Words near fangle in the dictionary

  1. fangirlism
  2. fangirls
  3. fangirly
  4. fangish
  5. fangite
  6. fangle
  7. fangled
  8. fangles
  9. fangless
  10. fanglet
  11. fanglets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fangle (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.

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