wheedle

A mosquito spots the eminent man and zooms over to wheedle in his ear, but Bashō remains immobile.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2025

Even as ex-mayor, it tickled Dick that he could wheedle an author into joining us.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 23, 2023

The arsonists wheedle their way into his house with a combination of servile pleading, subtle bullying and appeals to Biedermann’s moral vanity.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 14, 2022

The abiding mystery is why Dale Carnegie didn’t wheedle himself a higher spot than No. 8.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 11, 2020

But like all parents—all adults—they didn’t fight and wheedle for their turn.

From "The Giver" by Lois Lowry

The man, 56-year-old Wu Zhiqing, complains about the quality of the mushrooms; she wheedles back in response.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026

For one thing, “very” is a fraud, masquerading as a strengthener when it merely wheedles and pleads.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 12, 2022

“At least we tried to make a movie. They can’t judge us for that,” wheedles director Darren at the end of the film, incorrectly.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2022

THE young woman with the microphone cajoles, hectors and wheedles customers with the breathless enthusiasm of a livestock auctioneer at a county fair.

From Economist ● Jul. 18, 2017

But once in a while, Prim wheedles one out of me.

From "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

Ask any nerd who wheedled her parents for a little more cash to buy books: What you get from Scholastic is what your parents are willing to buy you.

From Salon ● Oct. 23, 2023

Equipped with two $4,000 trackers — which he’d wheedled a company into donating — Clerkin went out with a fishing captain who said he’d seen megamouths roaming.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 11, 2021

A Los Angeles Times columnist supposedly wheedled the songwriters who wrote “Que Sera, Sera” and the “Bonanza” theme into composing it.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2021

As someone who wheedled his grandmother into taking him to see Hitchcock’s “Frenzy” at age 13, I can both relate, and think I have him beat in the awkwardness department.

From New York Times ● Aug. 24, 2018

"She wasn't hungry," Sansa said, knowing full well that her sister had probably stolen down to the kitchen hours ago and wheedled a breakfast out of some cook's boy.

From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin

Scientists had not yet discovered vitamins, so families did not fret about dietary “balance,” and there seems to have been little or none of the parental wheedling common today.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026

“Part Two” shows Durst wheedling his friends to do his bidding from behind bars and expecting nothing less than absolute allegiance.

From Salon ● Apr. 21, 2024

And certainly Marvel’s vocal characterization of the deteriorating Mary — lilting then wheedling then ratlike then hollow — is one you will not soon get out of your head.

From New York Times ● Jan. 25, 2022

So she enlisted Yala, at the time still an undergrad, who set out on the laborious door-to-door task of wheedling for access to anonymous mammograms.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 21, 2021

Their voices are wheedling and false; I can tell they don’t mean it, each one thinks her own lady on her own page is good.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood