Word.ws English Dictionary

waggling

waggling is the present participle and gerund of waggle.

Meaning of waggle

Verb

waggle (third-person singular simple present waggles, present participle waggling, simple past and past participle waggled)

  1. (transitive) To move (something) with short, quick motions; to wobble.
    • The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment, and leaned back blissfully into the soft cushions.1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To quickly raise and lower in rapid succession, usually as an implication of slyness, smugness, or suggestiveness.
  3. (intransitive) To reel, sway, or move from side to side; to move with a wagging motion; to waddle.
    • I know you by the waggling of your head.1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

See all 6 meanings of waggle

Noun

waggling (plural wagglings)

  1. The act of something being waggled.
    • Of a sudden […] a cross-bencher leaped on his seat and there played an imaginary double-bass with tremendous maestro-like wagglings of the elbow.1917, (Rudyard Kipling), The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat

Forms of waggling

pluralwagglings

Questions about waggling

What does waggling mean?
Waggling means the act of something being waggled.
What is waggling the present participle and gerund of?
Waggling is the present participle and gerund of waggle.
What part of speech is waggling?
Waggling is a noun.
What is the plural of waggling?
The plural of waggling is wagglings.

Words near waggling in the dictionary

  1. wagglers
  2. waggles
  3. waggletail
  4. wagglier
  5. waggliest
  6. waggling
  7. wagglings
  8. waggly
  9. waggon
  10. waggonage
  11. waggonages

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: waggling (page history and authors); waggle (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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Cite this entry: “waggling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/waggling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.