naggle

/ˈnæɡ.əl/

naggle verb: to toss the head or cause to toss the head.

Verb

naggle (third-person singular simple present naggles, present participle naggling, simple past and past participle naggled)

(obsolete) To toss the head or cause to toss the head.
- On the Pieces last Sunday they made such a rout, i That the scurrilous author would soon be found out, Then they naggled their heads, while their tails flew about.1780, Timmy Straightforward (pseud.), A Third Letter from Timmy Straightforward to his Mother, page 7
- To manage children so skilfully that they do not know they are being managed is a great art. A good driver never naggles his horse : he lets the bit prove a guide, but not an irritant.1881, Alfred Rowland, Half-hours with teachers, page 41
To niggle; to irritate or bother continually or repeatedly.
- Nothing obscene, for goodness sake, but just at the bare threshold of audibility, so that it niggles and naggles and bothers.1969, Harlan Ellison, The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, page 153
- Or will the story come first? — the "some incident observed in the subway" which naggles away at the author, until he begins to write about it, seeing only then (but perhaps not really clearly, himself, ever at all) the point of what he is saying,1970, Frank A. Dickson, Sandra Smythe, Handbook of Short Story Writing, page 220
To haggle; to negotiate argumentatively.
- Ye see the wives naggle aboot tripe and sheep heeds , Or washing their greens at a fountain, Where the young Nuns used to be telling their beads, And had nowt but thor sins to be countin';1889 February, “The New Markets”, in The Monthly Chronicle of North-country Lore and Legend, volume 3, number 24, page 83
- Nobody wants to naggle about a few months or a year or two, more or less, but the difficulties of the case are exceedingly complicated.1899, Great Britain. Parliament, The Parliamentary Debates, page 637
(intransitive) To nag, carp, or quarrel.
- Many instances occur daily in which married people go on naggling at one another—naggle, naggle, until they get into a perfect storm—though both would be heartily ashamed for any third party to know what they were quarrelling about.1861, John Cale Miller, Courtship and Marriage, page 28
- A child should be joyous, but how, if he be continually naggled at, can he be?1873, Pye Henry Chavasse, Aphorisms on the Mental Culture and Training of a Child
(transitive) To harass or scold.
- I 'll go for my paw if folks naggle me ; an' nobody shall tech me !1899, St. Nicholas - Volume 26, Part 1, page 396
- She naggles thy heart out, maybe. But that's just the wrigglin' a place out for hersen.1988, David Herbert Lawrence, The widowing of Mrs Holroyd ; &, The daughter-in-law, page 95
To make many minor adjustments to; to fiddle with.
- You can niggle and naggle at any set of documents and always imply that the set you might have put together would have been ever so much better.1974, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society
- The Bulletin art critic not only praised her 1894 Country Visitors and still-life studies but stated, in typically misogynist Bulletin style, that the latter showed 'a strength sadly lacking in the naggling method of most of her sister- artists'.1995, Joan Kerr, Heritage: The National Women's Art Book
To claw or dig away.
- "Water! —water!" she murmured as though in prayer to it , kneeling by the hole she had naggled in the ice , dabbling her finger in the icy slush that scarce let the water through.1899 September, Erle Cromer, “The Widow of Mums”, in The Canadian Magazine, volume 13, number 5, page 464
- The group of girls gathered round her as she began to naggle the long strands off, bit by bit, as close to her head as possible.1995, Sybil Marshall, The Chequer-board, page 85

Noun

naggle (plural naggles)

A minor irritant.
- So they all revolved round their trailing orbits in the sand, revolved round the naggles in their brains; all, except the sergeant.1948, The Strand Magazine - Volume 115, page 41

Examples of naggle in a sentence

But I knew the doctor's words naggled in the back of his mind.2018, Laura J. Gabbard, My Toughest One:
Under modern conditions and the extremely high cost of estimating plumbing work, he can not afford to estimate or submit bids which will be shopped or naggled after the award of contract.1953, United States. Congress. Joint Committee, Hearings, page 55:

Forms of naggle

Verb
third-person singular present	naggles
present participle	naggling
past participle	naggled
past	naggled
Noun
plural	naggles

Words that rhyme with naggle

Questions about naggle

What does naggle mean?: Naggle means to toss the head or cause to toss the head.
How do you use naggle in a sentence?: But I knew the doctor's words naggled in the back of his mind.
What part of speech is naggle?: Naggle can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce naggle?: Naggle is pronounced /ˈnæɡ.əl/.
What is the past tense of naggle?: The past tense of naggle is naggled.

Words near naggle in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: naggle (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “naggle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/naggle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.