Other forms: jiggling, jiggles, jiggled
To jiggle is to move something up and down or side to side with quick little jerks. Jiggle the key, jiggle the handle, jiggled it loose.
It is the standard remedy for a stuck key, a stuck window and an old cistern, and it works by letting parts find a position they could not be forced into. The little jerks are what distinguish it from shaking. Note wiggle and joggle, which belong to the same family of small-movement words.
1verbjiggleTo move something with quick little jerks.
“The baby laughed when her father jiggled her up and down on his knee.”
jiggle is a small quick movement.
Old French
gigue — a fiddle
Middle English
gyge — fiddle
English
jig
English, today
jiggle
From jig + -le. jig unknown. Derivation from Middle English gyge (“fiddle”), from Old French gigue (“a fiddle”) has been proposed, but the connection and sense development are obscure. The sense “a type of dance” of modern gigue is borrowed from English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA