verb (old: now recognised).—To coax, cajole, fawn on, TAKE IN (q.v.) [SKEAT: fr. Ger. wedeln. Century: It is not clear how a German word of this kind could get into English; but the German wars of the 17th century brought in a number of words, and this may have been taken up as a slang term. FARMER: in B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, 1696, to cut a WHEADLE = ‘to decoy by Fawning and Insinuation.’] As subs. = (1) cajolery, a hoax; (2) = a flatterer, cajoler; and (3) a SHARPER (q.v.): WHEEDLER, WHEEDLESOME, WHEEDLING, and other derivatives follow as a matter of course.
1664. BUTLER, Hudibras, II. iii. 335. His business was to pump and WHEEDLE.
1667. R. HEAD, Porteus Redivivus, or the Art of WHEEDLING [Title]. Ibid. (1678), Madam WHEEDLE [Title].
1668. ETHEREGE, She Would if She Could, i. 1. Don’t thou think to pass these gross WHEADLES on me too?… I could never have had the face to have WHEADL’D the poor knight so.
1673. WYCHERLEY, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, iv. 1. So young a WHEADLE? Ibid. (1675), The Country Wife, ii. 1. WHEEDLE her, jest with her, and be better acquainted one with another.
1692. SIR R. L’ESTRANGE, Æsop, 143. A fox … stood licking of his lips, at the cock, and WHEEDLING him to get him down.
1700. CONGREVE, The Way of the World, iii. 18. I have a deed of settlement … which I WHEEDLED out of her. Ibid., iii. 4. If that WHEADLING Villain has wrought upon Foible to detect me, I’m ruined. Ibid., v. 1. I am not the first that he has WHEADLED with his dissembling Tongue.
1713. ROWE, Jane Shore, i. 1. A laughing, toying, WHEEDLING, whimpering she.
1849–61. MACAULAY, The History of England, xviii. He WHEEDLED Tillotson out of some money.
1853. C. KINGSLEY, Hypatia, iv. In a fawning, WHEEDLING tone.
1876. ALCOTT, Hospital Sketches, 88. Anything more irresistibly WHEEDLESOME I never saw.
1885. CLEMENT SCOTT [Illustrated London News, 3 Oct., 339. 2]. The change from the carneying, WHEEDLING sneak to the cowardly bully, is extremely clever.
