Other forms: wiggles, wiggling, wiggled
To wiggle is to move from side to side in small quick jerks. Wiggle your toes, wiggle it loose, the tooth wiggles.
It is small and repeated, which is what separates it from wave or shake. Wiggle it free is the standard method for anything stuck. Wiggle room is a very useful phrase meaning the small amount of flexibility left in a rule or a negotiation. Note wiggly, meaning not straight — a wiggly line; and jiggle and waggle, which are the same idea with different vowels and slightly different motions.
1verbwiggleTo move from side to side in small quick jerks.
“She wiggled her toes in the warm sand.”
2nounmovementA small side-to-side movement.
“One wiggle and the whole shelf came down.”
wiggle is a small quick movement.
Middle Dutch wigelen came into English through trade contact, and it belongs to a family of small-movement words — wag, waggle, wiggle, jiggle — most of which English built or borrowed by ear.
Middle Low German
wigelen
Middle Dutch
wigelen — to wiggle
Middle English
wiglen
English, today
wiggle
Built from
From Middle English wiglen, probably from Middle Dutch wigelen (“to wiggle”) and perhaps Middle Low German wigelen, frequentative of wiegen (“to rock”), from wiege (“cradle”). See wain, and Dutch wieg (“cradle”). Cognate to Dutch wiggelen (“to wiggle”), Low German wiggeln (“to wiggle”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire