as in coaxing
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as in cajoling
to get (someone) to do something by gentle urging, special attention, or flattery
wheedled him into doing their work for them
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
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Recent Examples of wheedling
Zach Helfand, New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025
Natalie Oganesyan, Deadline, 18 Jan. 2026
Noun
Checkers can see your shortcuts, your reportorial wheedling, your blind spots.
—Zach Helfand, New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025
Verb
In a bid to rekindle the couple’s honeymoon phase, Yasmin troubleshoots by wheedling a chief executive role for him at payment processing company Tender (run by Max Minghella‘s inscrutable puppet-master Whitney Halberstram), and throwing her husband a lavish costume party for his 40th birthday.
—Natalie Oganesyan, Deadline, 18 Jan. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for wheedling
Noun
-
No coaxing or pulling from the crate.—
Cathy M. Rosenthal,
San Antonio Express-News,
26 Feb. 2026
-
Hair that’s naturally less heavy can hold more shape and bounce when styling, but maintaining a full-bodied look might take some extra coaxing.—
Grace McCarty,
Glamour,
9 Feb. 2026
Noun
-
This kind of boosterism—no less evident in Bernard Lewis’s highbrow argument in The New Yorker that Muslims fear modernity than in Niall Ferguson’s entreaties for the Bush Administration to resume the British Empire’s task of civilizing the natives—always seemed bafflingly sterile to me.—
Christine Smallwood,
Harpers Magazine,
24 Mar. 2026
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Samsung and Amazon will team up to bring interactive technology from Amazon to Samsung TV Plus, giving users the opportunity to shop from Amazon via their remote control or respond to other entreaties from advertisers.—
Brian Steinberg,
Variety,
24 Mar. 2026
Noun
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Each distortion is what happens when the body does the persuading, and the ideas are just the wardrobe.—
Alexis Coe,
Vanity Fair,
18 Mar. 2026
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But Putin cannot have needed much persuading to agree to a formal invitation to the US to have the bilateral meeting his team have long held out as the way towards peace in Ukraine.—
Nick Paton Walsh,
CNN Money,
9 Aug. 2025
Noun
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Caminero’s sprint included several mid-stride hops and fist pumps and exhortations to the crowd.—
Kevin Acee,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
16 Mar. 2026
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Freedom is a struggle, Ronald Reagan’s proclamation said in 1986, echoing Frederick Douglass’s exhortation that if there is no struggle, there is no progress.—
Adam Harris,
The Atlantic,
19 Feb. 2026
Noun
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The material contained on this site is intended to inform, entertain and educate the reader and in no way represents an inducement to gamble legally or illegally or any sort of professional advice.—
Michelle Del Rey,
USA Today,
20 Mar. 2026
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The material contained on this site is intended to inform, entertain and educate the reader and in no way represents an inducement to gamble legally or illegally or any sort of professional advice.—
Jalen Williams,
Freep.com,
6 Mar. 2026
Noun
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Impressed by the senator’s blandishments, the egoistic journalist argues military strategy and then faces a moment of conscience.—
Armond White,
National Review,
17 May 2023
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People want to hear blandishments about engagement and infrastructure.—
Rory Smith,
New York Times,
14 Apr. 2023
Noun
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In this newest cover-up, Clooney repeats his film’s original failing — its nostalgic salute to the power of electronic media suasion.—
Armond White,
National Review,
30 Apr. 2025
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Finally, the original Concert vision embraced formal deliberation and moral suasion as the key mechanism of collaborative foreign policy.—
Stacie E. Goddard,
Foreign Affairs,
22 Apr. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Wheedling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/wheedling. Accessed 29 Mar. 2026.
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