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

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 more other people sit stone-faced, the more I turn into a clown, trying to wheedle just little bit of encouraging energy back from them.

From Slate ● Feb. 26, 2022

Over three gripping seasons, HBO’s “Succession” has followed ruthless members of the Roy family as they wheedle and extort their way to a place atop the media empire they feel entitled to.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 17, 2021

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

From "The Giver" by Lois Lowry

“Because of your big career that’s so much bigger than mine?” wheedles her petulant husband.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 20, 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

Wave your hands over and around two aerials emanating from a black box and hear all pitches of electronic wheedles.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 26, 2017

But the brook always whines and wheedles: “Don’t go, Ida B, don’t go. Nobody’s callin’ and they can wait, anyway.

From "Ida B" by Katherine Hannigan

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

In 1855, Davis wheedled about $20,000 out of Congress, enough for a trip to the Mideast to buy 30-some camels and dromedaries and hire “cameleers.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 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

It’s a fascinating vignette, but we never learn her real name, or what happened to her, or how she wheedled those secrets from Nazi submariners, or how useful her intel proved to Alliance and MI6.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 5, 2019

“Everyone says you’re too stupid, but I don’t believe it. Please, Matt,” she wheedled.

From "The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer

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

“You know a lot about bathroom law,” Ben purrs to Bea when they meet-cute wheedling a restroom key from a barista.

From New York Times ● Dec. 21, 2023

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

Real serving girls were always teasing the potboys, flirting with the cooks, wheedling a taste of this, a bite of that.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin