Obs. exc. dial. [f. WIMBLE sb.]
1. trans. To pierce with or as with a wimble; to make (a hole) with a wimble.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 528/2. Wymbelyn, or wymmelyn, terebro.
1642. Fuller, Holy & Prof. St., IV. ix. 279. To use force first before people are fairly taught the truth, is to knock a nail into a board, without wimbling a hole for it.
1663. Sir T. Herbert, Mem. Chas. I. (1702), 142. A Foot-Soldier … wimbled a hole into the Coffin that was largest.
1713. C’tess Winchilsea, Misc. Poems, 127. A Nutshell, wimbl’d by a Worm.
1791. Cowper, Odyss., XXIII. 232. I wimbled, next, The frame throughout.
b. transf. (Cf. WIMBLE sb. 1 b, quot. 1719.).
1656. R. Fletcher, trans. Martial, VII. lxxiv. Wouldst thou be wimbled gratis when thou art A wrinkled wretch deformed in every part?
c. 1670. Roxb. Ball. (1891), VII. 486. And well he could dissemble, when wenches he would wimble.
2. intr. To bore into; chiefly fig. (intr. and refl.), to penetrate or insinuate oneself into.
1601. W. Leigh, Christians Watch (1605), 17. How this spirit hath entred and wimbled into your soules … I know not.
a. 1641. Spelman, Dial. Coin, Reliq. S. (1698), 210. In this latter age we have wimbl’d even into the bowels of Plutus’s Treasury.
1671. Cosinm in Northumbrian Docts. (Surtees), 240. Hee would fain wimble himselfe into some employment under mee.
1830. Galt, Lawrie T., III. ii. 189. Charley … felt something like a man’s finger wimbling in under his neck.
1839. New Monthly Mag., LVI. 6. Wimbling deeper and deeper still, till he has shattered the remains of your nerves to atoms.
Hence Wimbling vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1623. Cockeram, Terebration, a wimbling.
1637. Whiting, Albino & Bellama, 59. We men … in our silent beds of earth will court The slender-wasted wormes, and with them sport,… and vow their wimbling busse Is full as sweet as womens was to us.
1648. Herrick, Hesp., Kisses Loathsome. Those lips please me which are plac’t Close, but not too strictly lac’t: Yeilding I wo’d have them; yet Not a wimbling Tongue admit.
