wheedling
wheedling is the present participle and gerund of wheedle.
Meaning of wheedle
Verb
wheedle (third-person singular simple present wheedles, present participle wheedling, simple past and past participle wheedled)
- To cajole or attempt to persuade by flattery.
- I’d like one of those, too, if you can wheedle him into telling you where he got it.
- Synonyms:
- butter up, inveigle, sweet-talk, blandander, blandish, cajole, sweeten, fast-talk, canoodle, carny
- To obtain by flattery, guile, or trickery.
- If the worſt come to the worſt,—I'll turn my Wife to Graſs—I already have a deed of Settlement of the beſt part of her Eſtate; which I wheadl'd out of her; [...]1700, [William] Congreve, The Way of the World, a Comedy. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act III, scene xviii, page 51
Adjective
wheedling (comparative more wheedling, superlative most wheedling)
- Coaxing, aiming to persuade.
- Then, in a soft, wheedling voice, "Canst thou not let me in, my little bird? Sure there are other lasses besides thyself who would like to trade with a poor peddler who has travelled all the way from Gruenstadt just to please the pretty ones of Trutz-Drachen."1888, Howard Pyle, “ch. 9”, in Otto of the Silver Hand
- ESTRAGON: That would be too bad, really too bad. [Pause.] Wouldn't it, Didi, be really too bad? [Pause.] When you think of the beauty of the way. [Pause.] And the goodness of the wayfarers. [Pause. Wheedling.] Wouldn't it, Didi?1954, Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, →ISBN, page 8
Noun
wheedling (plural wheedlings)
- The act of one who wheedles.
Forms of wheedling
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more wheedling |
| superlative | most wheedling |
| Noun | |
| plural | wheedlings |
Origin of wheedling
From wheedle + -ing.
Words formed from wheedling
Questions about wheedling
- What does wheedling mean?
- Wheedling means coaxing, aiming to persuade.
- What is wheedling the present participle and gerund of?
- Wheedling is the present participle and gerund of wheedle.
- What part of speech is wheedling?
- Wheedling can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near wheedling in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wheedling (page history and authors); wheedle (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:
Cite this entry: “wheedling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wheedling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.