How to Use wriggle in a Sentence

wriggle

1 of 2 verb
  • The children wriggled and squirmed in their chairs.
  • The snake wriggled across the path and went underneath a bush.
  • They wriggled out of their wet clothes.
  • She managed to wriggle free of her ropes.
  • He was able to wriggle through the narrow opening.
  • I had trouble getting the wriggling fish off my hook.
  • The tree is very loose in the soil, easy to wriggle like a loose tooth.
    — oregonlive.com, 15 June 2019
  • In the soil in his palm, an earthworm wriggled.
    — Madeline Heim, jsonline.com, 26 Dec. 2025
  • Their hopes were dashed when Musk tried to wriggle out of the deal.
    — Kevin Crowe, USA TODAY, 5 Oct. 2022
  • Your child must be mature enough to sit up straight and not wriggle around.
    — Daniela Porat, ProPublica, 6 Feb. 2020
  • There are some thinkers whose ideas emerge slowly, wriggle around, take turns.
    — Michelle Orange, Harper's Magazine, 3 Nov. 2023
  • And sure enough, my wife pushed a second time, [and] his body just wriggled out.
    — Grace Gavilanes, PEOPLE.com, 31 July 2019
  • Live crab from the North wriggle in huge tanks in the fish market.
    — Jane Perlez, New York Times, 5 June 2018
  • The notion that embryos can wriggle around in the womb or egg isn’t new.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 26 Oct. 2021
  • Small eels can use a fish ladder at the dams, while large eels are able to wriggle up and over.
    — Liz Bowie, baltimoresun.com, 17 May 2018
  • Two actors are wriggling across the stage on their bellies.
    — Helen Shaw, New Yorker, 26 Nov. 2025
  • Meanwhile, the child being held by the first man can be seen wriggling around in his arms.
    — Abigail Adams, Peoplemag, 10 Aug. 2023
  • Time to wriggle out of your cozy sleeping sock and seize the day, like this little chick has.
    — Aj Willingham, CNN, 30 Apr. 2021
  • Living strands of hyphae reach from its throat and wriggle into her mouth.
    — Randall Colburn, EW.com, 23 Jan. 2023
  • After about two hours, the Dixons wriggled out of the tape and called police.
    — Vic Ryckaert, Indianapolis Star, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Pull that out and leave it on a chair, just in case someone wants to wriggle in for a full-body snuggle.
    — Outside Online, 17 Nov. 2020
  • The fox looked at the wriggling thing, uncertain which side was speaking.
    — Hazlitt, 19 Nov. 2025
  • The fish wriggled desperately until the egret opened wide and gulped it down.
    — Bob Robinson, Arkansas Online, 19 June 2023
  • Lue could make a case at being the most confident his team will wriggle out of holes of their own making.
    — Los Angeles Times, 15 Apr. 2022
  • The fish thaws and revives in the dog's stomach, where its wriggling causes the dog to vomit.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 28 Dec. 2019
  • Musk was triumphant in that case, but he's got plenty more legal trouble to wriggle out from.
    — Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, 20 Jan. 2023
  • Kumiko was charming enough to wriggle her way out of trouble when she was caught sneaking a glass of milk.
    — Susan Orlean, The New Yorker, 28 Dec. 2021
  • One aircrewman was able to wriggle out from underneath the tank.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Aug. 2019
  • Females wriggle into the sand tail-first and bury their eggs; then males curve around them to fertilize the eggs.
    — Deborah Sullivan Brennan, sandiegouniontribune.com, 15 Mar. 2018
  • After the show, my daughter wriggled her way to the front of the scrum at the stage door with her Playbill.
    — Sam Walker, WSJ, 11 July 2018

wriggle

2 of 2 noun
  • The only thing missing was the wriggle room.
    — Hannah Silverman, Parents, 8 Aug. 2025
  • There’s no teen watching for wriggle-through-able holes in the parental-authority net.
    — Carolyn Hax, Washington Post, 2 Dec. 2022
  • The wriggle phase lasts until the burrowing hagfish pops its head out of the substrate.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 20 June 2024
  • On one hand, the country appears to be running out of financial wriggle room.
    — The Economist, 2 Nov. 2017
  • Finally, a little wriggle and some ripples reveal a tiny calf there, too.
    — Juliet Kinsman, Condé Nast Traveler, 22 Nov. 2023
  • There are puppy snuggles, kisses, and adorable wriggles that will keep you entertained for hours.
    — Sophia Caraballo, Woman's Day, 4 June 2019
  • All of which is to say, there's still plenty of wriggle room on your Oscar pool ballot and reason to watch.
    — Bob Mondello, NPR, 8 Mar. 2024
  • One robot wriggles like a newborn baby to understand its body.
    — NBC News, 19 June 2017
  • Look out for eels’ eyes peeking out from coral castles, and watch the glowing green tentacles of a sea anemone wriggle in the tide.
    — Shannon Sims, New York Times, 11 Feb. 2020
  • Deadpan humor is a slippery creature; miss the tone by just a little, and the potential wriggles away.
    — Neil Genzlinger, New York Times, 3 May 2017
  • The dancers, who double as performers and teachers, gyrate in a circle as the alpacas wriggle among them.
    — John Clarke, WSJ, 25 Mar. 2018
  • While larvae wriggle in their hexagonal cells, Varroa mites are busy sucking their hemolyph, or blood, for sustenance.
    — Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, 5 June 2015
  • Museums in China have barely any wriggle room to question the official line.
    — The Economist, 16 Dec. 2017
  • Just under your skin lie whole aqueous worlds, where trillions of cells spark and beat and wriggle and secrete, doing all the complicated tasks of keeping you alive.
    — Megan Molteni, STAT, 14 May 2022
  • If so, the Ducks will enter the meet -- June 7-10 at Hayward Field -- with wriggle room.
    — Ken Goe, OregonLive.com, 30 May 2017
  • Through a series of plot wriggles, Grace has the opportunity to hang around in the Oval Office.
    — Josephine Livingstone, New Republic, 27 Sep. 2017
  • It might be coated with compounds capable of making sperm wriggle in place, keeping them from inseminating a woman’s egg.
    — Zoë Schlanger, Newsweek, 15 Dec. 2014
  • God- and state-fearing Although Christians are growing more numerous, the wriggle room allowed to them is shrinking.
    — The Economist, 15 Mar. 2018
  • From Dave Spang’s perch high atop a sandy cliff in Truro, the vast ocean wriggles and writhes almost imperceptibly beneath a cloudless sky.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 26 Sep. 2019
  • But the modern members of the animal lineage—millions and millions of species of them that flit and fly and sprint and swim and wriggle and crawl—can all trace their origins to a singular uni-to-multi switch.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 28 Sep. 2022
  • Forest, particularly if any deal for Anderson goes through before the end of the month, will have plenty of wriggle room, financially.
    — Paul Taylor, New York Times, 2 June 2026
  • Listen to this article For those who are so inclined, there’s nothing quite so delicious as a successful hack — a clever wriggle around the rules and expectations that constrain mere mortals.
    — Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board, Orlando Sentinel, 27 June 2024
  • The team chose a peekytoe crab shape simply for the fun of watching a minuscule robot wriggle in a crab-like fashion, but their three-dimensional printing technique could be used to mimic any animal or shape, the researchers say.
    — Manasee Wagh, Popular Mechanics, 26 May 2022
  • The Snake Learn to Let Go From the savannahs of South Africa to the tropical waters where sea kraits wriggle, snakes all over the world must shed their skins.
    — Kate Siber, Outside, 21 Oct. 2025
  • Everything old feels new again, down to the iconic yellow-eyed logo, displayed up on a catwalk lined with TV screens, in which the static cat-eye pupils first wriggle, then reveal themselves as slinky, silhouetted dancers.
    — Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker, 16 Apr. 2026
  • All but about 15% of the revenue is dedicated by voters, leaving little wriggle room for discretion by the council; for example, about one third of the entire capital budget is dedicated to drainage.
    — Faimon Roberts, NOLA.com, 9 Dec. 2020
  • No team has ever been relegated from the Premier League with 43 points in a 38-game season, giving Daniel Farke an extra bit of wriggle room in the final three games.
    — Mark Carey, New York Times, 11 May 2026
  • That description offers a little more wriggle room; Windows 10 might only have a plurality share of enterprise systems rather than the majority share Nadella claimed.
    — Peter Bright, Ars Technica, 25 Oct. 2018
  • Toward the end of Wednesday’s semifinal, Morocco was the likelier team to score, until Mbappé got into his favorite wriggle zone, on the edge of the penalty area, and quick-stepped his way through a crowd of defenders.
    — Sam Knight, The New Yorker, 17 Dec. 2022
  • Every programmer-marketer relationship adheres to its own interior logic, and a longtime supporter of a network can expect to be granted a fair amount of wriggle room if under-deliveries make a case for shifting inventory out of NFL games.
    — Anthony Crupi, Sportico.com, 19 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wriggle.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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