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

To do so, he said, “I’ve had to shove, push, cajole, persuade, wheedle, exaggerate, manipulate, flatter, be obnoxious, occasionally lie, and always sell.”

From Washington Post ● Nov. 21, 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

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

From "The Giver" by Lois Lowry

The man, 56-year-old Wu Zhiqing, complains about the quality of the mushrooms; she wheedles back in response.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026

“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

But once in a while, Prim wheedles one out of me.

From "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

His father, less a bully but now a user, had wheedled his way onto the set of “Rocky” and embarrassed him.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026

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

Then he had the woman hand her phone to a visiting technician and wheedled the phone number of the department head out him.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 26, 2022

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

“Come on,” wheedled his father with a smile, “there must be something.”

From "Shooting Kabul" by N. H. Senzai

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

Yet Penn gives him a vivid, wheedling desperation that’s weirdly moving, and the younger Penn has clearly inherited the emotional expressiveness of her mother, Robin Wright.

From New York Times ● Aug. 19, 2021

Finally, bravo to Seattle Opera’s indispensable Jonathan Dean, who translates and writes the supertitles projected above the stage, for having one of the wheedling stepsisters calling her prey “Princykins.”

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 21, 2019

His voice doesn’t sound wheedling, it sounds genuinely curious.

From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse