wheedle

That should shut down whoever is trying to wheedle you into gimmicky strategies, or chasing the returns of recently hot assets.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026

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

Leibovich is, more subtly, a brilliant interviewer able to wheedle not-quite-admissions from his subjects, who give him all the access in the world.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 10, 2022

He, Harry, had had too much experience of trying to wheedle information out of reluctant people not to recognize a master at work.

From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling

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

He jokes and wheedles and begs and tells stories and pledges his troth.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 3, 2019

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

He wheedled money from the city for more cops, more police stations, more equipment, and he made nice with community organizations.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 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

And so, in a Rite Aid staff bathroom I’d wheedled my way into by citing my pregnancy, I discovered that my trickle of blood had turned into a torrent.

From Slate ● Oct. 2, 2020

Waterside, merchants wheedled and cajoled customers, hoping to lure them into their shops.

From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss

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

Hunter Biden is such a stingy, wheedling, dishonest, self-serving dirtbag that even after the court-ordered paternity test proved the child was his, he refuses to acknowledge his own biological daughter.

From Washington Times ● Apr. 27, 2023

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

“This isn’t one of your tea parties! Do you want me to feed him cookies? Poor Mellower,” he said in a wheedling tone.

From "The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm" by Nancy Farmer