Other forms: wriggling, wriggles, wriggled
To wriggle is to twist and turn your body in small quick movements. A worm, or a child being dressed.
It suits anything long and boneless, and it suits impatience, since a child who will not sit still wriggles. The word carries a sense of getting free, and wriggling out of something means escaping a duty by cleverness rather than force. That figurative use is the commonest in adult speech. There is also wriggle room, meaning the small margin left for changing your position later.
From wrig + le. Compare Dutch wriggelen (“to wriggle, squirm”), Low German wriggeln (“to wriggle”). Related to Old English wrigian (“to turn, wend, hie, go move”), from Proto-Germanic wrigōną (“to wriggle”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Ways of Moving
First appears in chapter 22 of A Man Called Ove.
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