Word.ws English Dictionary

wriggle out of

wriggle out of verb: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wriggle, out of.

Verb

wriggle out of (third-person singular simple present wriggles out of, present participle wriggled out of, simple past and past participle wriggled out of)

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wriggle, out of.
    • The worm wriggled out of the man's pocket.
  2. (transitive) To avoid performing a duty or fulfilling an obligation, by sneaky means.
    • RMT General Secretary Eddie Dempsey claimed the operator was trying to "wriggle out of its agreements and block fair pay for its members".2025 June 25, Richard Wilcock, “Network News: RMT overtime ban prompts XC cancellations warning”, in RAIL, number 1038, page 11

Forms of wriggle out of

third-person singular presentwriggles out of
present participlewriggled out of
past participlewriggled out of
pastwriggled out of

Questions about wriggle out of

What does wriggle out of mean?
Wriggle out of means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wriggle, out of.
What part of speech is wriggle out of?
Wriggle out of is a verb.
What is the past tense of wriggle out of?
The past tense of wriggle out of is wriggled out of.

Words near wriggle out of in the dictionary

  1. wriest
  2. wrig
  3. wrigged
  4. wrigging
  5. wriggle
  6. wriggle out of
  7. wriggle room
  8. wriggled
  9. wriggled out of
  10. wriggler
  11. wrigglers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wriggle out of (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: “wriggle out of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wriggle_out_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.