wriggle
/ˈrɪɡ(ə)l
/verb
1Twist and turn with quick writhing movements: [no object]: she kicked and wriggled but he held her firmly [with object]: she wriggled her bare, brown toes...
- She's wriggling and twisting on the bed all the time.
- The baby wriggled, all limbs kicking and waving happily.
- They had sliced the worm in two and the worm was still wriggling.
Synonyms
squirm, writhe, wiggle, jiggle, jerk, thresh, flounder, flail, twitch, turn, twist, twist and turn, zigzag;
snake, worm, slither, slink, crawl, creep
1.1 [no object, with adverbial of direction] Move in a particular direction with wriggling movements: Susie wriggled out of her clothes...
- She reached the rocks and wriggled through them, moving her feet gently through the water.
- Someone latched onto him but he wriggled away, his eyes directly on Gabrielle Potter.
- She tried to wriggle away without waking him but she could barely move.
2 [no object] (wriggle out of) Avoid (something) by devious means: don’t try and wriggle out of your contract...
- He said that, in his opinion, Mrs Stansfield's counter-claim was a ‘sham’ because she constantly tried to wriggle out of the contract and avoid blame for the shop's closure.
- To cut a long story short, this bill is introducing these rules to stop the banks from avoiding and wriggling out of their taxes.
- The whisky industry, which last week was trying to wriggle out of new environmental regulations on water, has been outed as a major source of water pollution.
Synonyms
avoid, shirk, dodge, evade, elude, sidestep, circumvent, eschew;
hide from, escape from, extricate oneself from, steer clear of
informal duck
archaic bilk
noun
A wriggling movement: she gave an impatient little wriggle...
- She gave a little wriggle of her shoulders, looking uncomfortable.
- He was not gagged, which was a blessing, but the rope was tied tight and limited any movement to a caterpillar-like wriggle.
- Sea creatures appear lashed by an ocean spray of brilliant white diamonds; the twisting form of an iguana brooch insinuates the darting wriggle of the animal's movements.
Synonyms
squirm, jiggle, wiggle, jerk, twist, turn
Derivatives
wriggly
- It's a very wriggly baby… it was playing with its fingers and toes while we were watching, and opening/closing its mouth.
- Each molecule is a bit like a tadpole: a large head, with a long, wriggly tail.
- I watched one that had caught a particularly large and wriggly earthworm but couldn't manage to eat it.
Origin
Late 15th century: from Middle Low German wriggelen, frequentative of wriggen 'twist, turn'.