[f. WRIGGLE v. + -ING1.]
1. The action of the verb in various physical senses; an instance of this.
1580. Tusser, Husb., 1 b. How to cure the wrigling of ye taile in a sheepe or a lambe.
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 427. The Lampreis … get betwene the very mashes [of a net], which with their much winding and wrigling they will wrest wider and wider.
1665. Phil. Trans., I. 67. The wrigling and playing of the Mandril.
1711. Swift, Jrnl. to Stella, 2 Oct. Lovet, towards the end of dinner, after twenty wrigglings, said [etc.].
1843. Le Fevre, Life Trav. Phys., III. III. viii. 189. Appetite … is not sharpened by the wriggling of the locomotives.
1866. Geo. Eliot, F. Holt, i. The wrigglings of a worm.
2. fig. Evasion; equivocation; shuffling.
1866. Darwin, in Life & Lett. (1887), III. 56. He is … my superior, even in the master art of wriggling.
1895. Advance (Chicago), 7 Feb., 652/2. There is a wriggling that is wrong, as when Peter wriggled from the questioning accusations of the servant girl.
3. attrib. in allusive use, as † wriggling disease, mordicancy, trade.
1690. D’Urfey, Collin’s Walk Lond., I. 17. If any of his Flock were seiz’d By heat, with wrigling Disease.
a. 1693. Urquhart, Rabelais, III. xxxii. 271. Their … figging Itch, wrigling Mordicancy.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills, VI. 91. I am a Baker, And … have … a Wrigling-Pole.
1765. [E. Thompson], Meretriciad, 40. The fam’d itinerant lass … by her motions in the wriggling trade, Two sterling thousands … made.
