wheedly
wheedly adjective: involving or characterized by wheedling (flattery, cajoling); coaxy.
Adjective
wheedly (comparative more wheedly, superlative most wheedly)
- Involving or characterized by wheedling (flattery, cajoling); coaxy.
- The maids of honour (Miss Lister and Miss Paget) are very coaxy and wheedly with me, and nice creatures both of them.1838 October, Sarah Lyttelton, Baroness Lyttelton, “Lady Lyttelton to the Hon. Caroline Lyttelton.”, in Mrs. Hugh Wyndham [Maud Mary Lyttelton], editor, Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, Lady...
- "Listen, dear," said Mrs. O'Dowd, who had begun to sound wheedly, "shall we be goin to look at the floods?"1955, Patrick White, The Tree of Man, New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →ISBN, page 74
Examples of wheedly in a sentence
- There's no way the guy could be like intentionally making his voice this wheedly-sounding; it's got to be Gately's own Disease.1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 887:
- Danae's voice went sweet and wheedly. ¶ 'You're big.2021, Louise Erdrich, The Sentence: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper, →ISBN, page 8:
Forms of wheedly
| comparative | more wheedly |
|---|---|
| superlative | most wheedly |
Origin of wheedly
From wheedle + -y.
Questions about wheedly
- What does wheedly mean?
- Wheedly means involving or characterized by wheedling (flattery, cajoling); coaxy.
- How do you use wheedly in a sentence?
- There's no way the guy could be like intentionally making his voice this wheedly-sounding; it's got to be Gately's own Disease.
- What part of speech is wheedly?
- Wheedly is an adjective.
Words near wheedly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wheedly (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: “wheedly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wheedly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.