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Wrangle   Listen
noun
Wrangle  n.  An angry dispute; a noisy quarrel; a squabble; an altercation.
Synonyms: Altercation; bickering; brawl; jar; jangle; contest; controversy. See Altercation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wrangle" Quotes from Famous Books



... the rose of her gown, and her eyes sparkled with happiness. So far as Mr. Smith could see, she dispensed her favors with rare impartiality; though, as he came toward them finally, he realized at once that there was a merry wrangle of some sort afoot. He had not quite reached them when, to his surprise, Mellicent turned to him in very ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... sunshine and rain, Bewailing its loss and boasting its gain, Blessing its pleasure and cursing its pain, The hurrying world goes up and down: Every avenue and street Of city and town Are veins that throb with the restless beat Of the eager multitude's trampling feet. Men wrangle together to get and hold A sceptre of power or a crock of gold; Blaspheming God's name with the breath He gave, And plotting revenge on the brink of the grave! And Fashion's followers, flitting after, O'ertake and pass the funeral train, Thoughtlessly scattering ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... "Had another wrangle with Jason Sparr," explained Phil, after the meal. "He followed me to one of the stores, and I told him just what I ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... threat, started as if a crossbow bolt had whizzed past his head when least expected. And it was with a trembling voice that he replied: "Nay, good father Glover, thou takest too much credit for thy grey hairs. Consider, good neighbour, thou art too old for a young martialist to wrangle with. And in the matter of my Maudie, I can trust thee, for I know no one who would be less willing than thou to ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... was it able, upon a forty-fourth ballot, to organize by the election of a Speaker, and that from the day of its meeting on the 5th of December, 1859, up to such organization, it was involved in an incessant and stormy wrangle upon the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... sake, sir, don't let us wrangle like a pair of women. I brought you here to speak my mind to you, and speak it I will. I warn you, Mr. Dishart, that you are being watched. You have been seen meeting this lassie in Caddam as ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... serve no good purpose; if it did not originate in, it was no doubt aggravated by, one of those entanglements common to the life of the bagnio, which Charles's Court so faithfully reflected. Some wrangle as to the enjoyment of the facile charms of one of the royal mistresses, or the disputed paternity of some bastard, very probably was the origin of an ignoble quarrel which presently reached the dimensions of an affair of State, occupied the attention of ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... representatives of Parma began to wrangle with the envoy in very insolent fashion. "Richardot is always their mouth-piece," said Dale, "only Champagny choppeth in at every word, and would do so likewise in ours if we would ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... afterwards that, but for that speech, which drew the delegates together and made them forget their differences, the Congress would probably have ended in a wrangle. And a year later, again in Virginia, in defense of his resolution to arm the militia, he gave utterance to the most famous speech of all, starting quietly with the sentence, "Mr. President, it is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope," and ending with the ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... herself as to lodge in his breast or take quarters near him. But cowardice is altogether lodged with him, and she has found a host who will honour her and serve her so faithfully that he is willing to resign his own fair name for hers." Thus they wrangle all night, vying with each other in slander. But often one man maligns another, and yet is much worse himself than the object of his blame and scorn. Thus, every one said what he pleased about him. And when ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... upon to make good anything that may be either mislaid or damaged. You, Lai Sheng's wife, will every day have to exercise general supervision and inspection; and should there be those who be lazy, any who may gamble, drink, fight or wrangle, come at once and report the matter to me; and you mustn't show any leniency, for if I come to find it out, I shall have no regard to the good old name of three or four generations, which you may enjoy. You now all have your fixed duties, so that whatever batch of you after this ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... well!—for precious is the rest, In that narrow house the sleep is calm; There, with rapture sorrow leaves the breast,— Man's afflictions there no longer harm. Slander now may wildly rave o'er thee, And temptation vomit poison fell, O'er the wrangle on the Pharisee, Murderous bigots banish thee to hell! Rogues beneath apostle-masks may leer, And the bastard child of justice play, As it were with dice, with mankind here, And so on, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... his unlucky speech at Philadelphia, no action was taken from the German side, and no information given him which might lead him to understand that Germany desired to avoid a casus belli at all costs, for fear of giving Mr. Wilson an opportunity to gain a cheap triumph over Germany in a verbal wrangle. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... than either of the other usages, while it would possess the advantage of conveying a suggestion of that proclivity for tearing, so characteristic of the animal designated by the term. On this important question the learned philologists wrangle. For my part, I stick to tarrier, which comes "oncommon handy," as the horse-dealer hinted, when reproved by the Cambridge student for reducing a noble animal nearly to the level of a donkey ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... assurance, for their learning but their degrees, or for their gravity but their wrinkles or dulness. They had better laugh at one another here, as it is the custom of the world. Laughing is of all professions; the miser may hoard, the spendthrift squander, the politician plot, the lawyer wrangle, and the gamester cheat; still their main design is to be able to laugh at one another; and here they may do it at a cheap and easy rate. After all, should this work fail to please the greater number of readers, I am sure it cannot miss being ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... energies to take down his speech verbatim. It was not a long one, it was hardly, perhaps, to be called a speech at all, it was rather as if the man had thrown his very self into the breach made by the unhappy wrangle of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... them all, now, from a new angle of vision. Discreetly aloof, he observed, in passing, the complete free-and-easiness of the modern maiden with her modern cavalier; personalities flying; likewise legs and arms; a banter-wrangle interlude over a tennis-racquet; flight and pursuit of the offending maiden, punctuated with shrieks, culminating in collapse and undignified surrender: while a pair of club peons—also discreetly ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... no questions, my lord," said Christie, bluntly. "I am a man of peace—I came not hither to wrangle with you at this place and season. Just suppose that I am well informed of all the obligements from your honour's nobleness, and then acquaint me, in as few words as may be, where is the unhappy woman—What have you ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... to the group who abstained, the great mass of the Peerage, too proud to wrangle where they could not win, too wise to knock their heads uselessly against a wall, too loyal not to do their utmost to spare their King. More than three hundred followed Lord Lansdowne's lead, taking for their motto, perhaps, the "Cavendo tutus" ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... did not regard it in that light, though I might have been willing to call it a retaining fee. However, do not let us wrangle about money any more. We can always settle our accounts when the bill is added up, if ever we reach so far. Now let us ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... "Historians will wrangle for a long time respecting the propriety of the methods by which the war was brought about, but once begun it was eminently desirable for the interests of the world, and even, perhaps, ultimately to the interests of Spain herself, that it should result in the success ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... administration of justice should be kept clear of any sinister temptations. Yet the Lord Chancellor, our chief judge, sits in the Cabinet, and makes party speeches in the Lords. Lord Lyndhurst was a principal Tory politician, and yet he presided in the O'Connell case. Lord Westbury was in chronic wrangle with the bishops, but he gave judgment upon "Essays and Reviews". In truth, the Lord Chancellor became a Cabinet Minister, because, being near the person of the sovereign, he was high in court precedence, and not upon a political theory ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... celebration of many old and sacred amusements which humanized the young heart, and moulded and prepared it for the reception of those feelings which are interwoven with the very principle of social good. A political wrangle is a poor substitute for the old moral tales of the winter evenings of old Scotland. Even our legends of superstitious fear carried in them the boon of heartfelt obligation, which, when the subject ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... rights to Lauderdale, thus leaving the latter free to deal with Claverhouse on his own terms. This bit of sharp practice was effected in August 1683; and it was not till the following March that the business was finally settled, after a long and tedious wrangle before the Court, in the course of which Claverhouse seemed to have found occasion to speak his mind pretty sharply to the Chancellor. On the question of the former's right to demand Dudhope on the terms of twenty years' purchase Lauderdale had ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... to international affairs, scanned an account of a senatorial wrangle, and was about to turn to the second page, whistling cheerily, when his attention ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... in San Francisco, a row was started by Express Drivers' Union No. 927 over the handling of a small heap of baggage at the Ferry Building. A few heads were broken, a score of arrests made, and the baggage was delivered. No one would have guessed that behind this petty wrangle was the fine Irish hand of Hegan, made potent by the Klondike gold of Burning Daylight. It was an insignificant affair at best—or so it seemed. But the Teamsters' Union took up the quarrel, backed by the whole Water Front Federation. Step ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... old repute, Looked scarce like one prepared for gain or loss, And scornful of the surreptitious "cross;" Rather the kind of cove who tackled fair Would think more of the "corner" than "the square." ("Ah! bust him, yes!" SAYERIUS here put in, "He meant to tie or wrangle, not to win. I'd like to—well, all right, I will not say: But 'twasn't so at Farnborough in my day.") Next stout ENTELLUS for the strife prepares, Strips off his ulster, and his body bares, Composed of mighty bone and brawn he stands. A six-foot straight, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various

... the lowest dregs of such a race would have been lawyers spending their span of life on this mysterious earth studying the long dusty records of dead and gone quarrels. We simians naturally admire a profession full of wrangle and chatter. But that is a monkeyish way of deciding ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... Jack of the Noke? The poor people they yoke With sumners and citacions, And excommunications. About churches and markets The bishop on his carpets At home soft doth sit. This is a fearful fit, To hear the people jangle. How wearily they wrangle! But ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... another was looked for, then another; then all were cut up in proper lengths and beaten and bruised, and finally packed into a bundle and carried off. Rooks, too, were there, breeding on the cathedral elms, and had no time and spirit to wrangle, but could only caw-caw distressfully at the wind, which tossed them hither and thither in the air and lashed the tall trees, threatening at each fresh gust to blow their nests to pieces. Small birds ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... Alban would not wrangle with him, and for a little while he ate in silence, watching the sparkling throng and listening to such scraps of conversation as floated to him from merry tables. Down in Union Street it had been the fashion ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... is a saloon, dance-hall, and all-night restaurant, flourishing brazenly within a stone's throw of Broadway, and it is counted one of the sights of the city. Upon entering, one may pass through a saloon where white-aproned waiters load trays and wrangle over checks, then into a ball-room filled with the flotsam and jetsam of midnight Manhattan. Above and around this room runs a white-and-gold balcony partitioned into boxes; beneath it are many tables separated from the waxed floor by a railing. Inside the enclosure men ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... down. What's your favourite brand of wine? Let's settle on it now, so as to have no unseemly wrangle when the waiter comes. I'm rather in awe of the waiter. It doesn't seem natural that any mere human man should be so obviously superior to the rest of us mortals as this waiter is. I'm going to give you only the choice of the first wines. ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... chuckled inwardly to hear their teacher thus snubbed. They hoped a retort and even a wrangle might follow; but Miss Gibbs had too much common sense, and, restraining herself, stalked away with as unconcerned an ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... Until this hour, alas, my labor was Vengeance on Wrangle only; how could I Then dedicate myself to such a task? A horde of men, however, I sent forth To seek him on the battle-plains of death. Ere night I do not doubt that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... ironically, "you place your insolent reliance, fond blossoms of your own blood. Good care have you taken of a young fellow—not so?—who cunningly shall pluck the fruit which you dare not yourself break off?" "Not with me"—Wotan cuts short the discussion, "wrangle with Mime. Danger threatens you through your brother. He is bringing to this spot a youth who is to slay Fafner for him. The boy knows nothing of me. The Nibelung uses him for his own purposes. Wherefore, I tell you, comrade, do freely as you ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... heat. If he does not distribute the same quantity as before he at least distributes whatever is necessary; the tenants can, at last, breathe comfortably, see clearly and not shiver; after ten years of suffocation, darkness and cold they are too well satisfied to wrangle with the proprietor, discuss his ways, and dispute over the monopoly by which he has constituted himself the arbitrator of their wants.—The same thing is done in the material order of things, in relation ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... after such illustrations, for those who still deny the authenticity of Ossian to declare whether they have ever studied him; and for those who still wrangle about the style of Macpherson's so-called Gaelic to decide whether they will continue such petty warfare among vowels and consonants, and ill-spelt mediaeval legends, when the science, the history, the navigation, the atmospheric phenomena, and the impending volcanic changes of Western Europe ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various

... their fathers, devoutly frequented the temples of the gods, and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an atheist under the sacerdotal robe. Reasoners of such a temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of faith or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume, and they approached with the same inward contempt and the same external reverence to the altars of the ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... I saw your face I resolved to honour and renown ye; If now I be disdained I wish my heart had never known ye. What? I that loved and you that liked, shall we begin to wrangle? No, no, no, my heart is ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... heat of the room and nearly suffocated by clouds of steam. We find at last an empty bench, and surround ourselves with a semicircle of wooden pails, collected from all around the room. Sometimes two women in search of pails lay hold of the same pail at the same moment, and a wrangle ensues, in the course of which each disputant reminds the other of all her failings, nicknames, and undesirable connections, living, dead, and unborn; until an attendant interferes, with more muscle than argument, punctuating the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... worse jumbles even than the English department stores. When there is a special sale under way the bargain counters are rigged up on the sidewalks. There, in the open air, buyer and seller will chaffer and bicker, and wrangle and quarrel, and kiss and make up again—for all the world to see. One of the free sights of Paris is a frugal Frenchman, with his face extensively haired over, pawing like a Skye terrier through a heap of marked-down lingerie; picking out things for ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... with a business-like foam about her bows. Spreckel's man was getting fidgety, as this was one of the opposition boats, and he expected soon to be quoting a competitive figure. To his pleased surprise, the Old Man came over to leeward, and, after a last wrangle about the hawser, took him on at the satisfactory figure of three ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... have liked to see the first meeting of their glances upstairs there," mused Marlow. "And perhaps nothing was said. But no man comes but of such a 'wrangle' (as Fyne called it) without showing some traces of it. And you may be sure that a girl so bruised all over would feel the slightest touch of anything resembling coldness. She was mistrustful; she could not be otherwise; for the energy ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... well-earned disgrace, as filth, as the badge of immorality, as a necessary defense against the loathesomeness of promiscuity, as a fearful warning against prostitution, and our advantage slips from us. The disease continues to spread wholesale disaster and degeneration while we wrangle over issues that were old when history began and are progressing with desperate slowness to a solution probably many centuries distant. Think of syphilis as a medical and a sanitary problem, and its ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... had discovered his loss—losses rather—and had made a complaint to the management; and suppose as a result of Parker's indignation that members of the uniformed force had been called in to adjudicate the wrangle; suppose through sheer coincidence Parker should see Trencher and should recognise the garments that Trencher wore as his own. Suppose any one of a half dozen things. Nevertheless, he meant to go back. He would take certain ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... from a wrangle with his client about matters agricultural, "he has not learned to 'make him good.' Come over to the school, and I will show you stock. You can't afford to keep poor ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... loud talk, laughter, and singing, as in the Italian towns. Sometimes, under the shade of a tree on the public promenade, a dozen armed peasants will play at cards or watch each other play; they never shout or wrangle; if they get hot over the game, pistol shots ring out, and this always before the utterance of any threat. The Corsican is grave and silent by nature. In the evening, a few persons come out to enjoy the cool air, but the promenaders on the Corso are nearly all of them foreigners; ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... a thing is right, it is not well Idly to wrangle, but to act with speed. Only, dear friends, in this mine enterprise, Let me have silence from your lips, I pray; For should my mother know of it, sharp pain Will follow yet my bold adventurous ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... and prefer to make capital out of our neighbour's difficulties rather than to render natural assistance? To make our conduct consistent, indeed, we treat our national interests no better than if they were the concerns of some foreign state; we make them bones of contention to wrangle over, and rejoice in nothing so much as in possessing means and ability to indulge these tastes. From this hotbed is engendered in the state a spirit of blind folly (24) and cowardice, and in the hearts of the citizens spreads a tangle of hatred and mutual hostility which, as I often shudder ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... remnants of my landlady's milk-pitcher. Then I ran up the remaining two flights as fast as my feet would carry me, and landed in the midst of an altercation between the inarticulate landlady and my girl neighbor. In passing, I could make out enough of the wrangle to understand that the latter was being ordered out of ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... prevents them from falling into the psychology of the crowd. But let them all be represented in one room by men who are professionally interested in their constituency's prejudices and what would you accomplish but a deepening of the cleavages? Would the session not become an interminable wrangle? ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... legal wrangle between the attorneys interrupted his tale of what happened in the Vendome, Carter Watson, without bitterness, amused and at the same time sad, saw rise before him the machine, large and small, that dominated his country, the unpunished ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... say what to avoid than what to accept, for there's more of it. Broad is the road of error, and the faults and follies, vices and sins, that wrangle and riot therein, are thicker than crickets on a sandy road in October,—thicker and blacker. You may catch them all day and there'll be just as many left. But the devoted followers of truth you may count on your fingers and carry them home in your bosom. Besides, the right thing to do cannot be ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... religious points, that was almost as bitter as the differences of opinions between their husbands on the subject of alternatives. In that distant day, homoeopathy, and allopathy, and hydropathy, and all the opathies, were nearly unknown; but men could wrangle and abuse each other on medical points, just as well and as bitterly then, as they do now. Religion, too, quite as often failed to bear its proper fruits, in 1793, as it proves barren in these, our own times. On this subject of religion, we have one word to say, and that ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... was. Bova Korolevich told them that he was of the poor class, and that his mother got her living by washing linen for strangers. When the sailors heard this they wondered that he should look so handsome, and bethought them how they might keep him with them. They began to wrangle as to who should be his master, but as soon as Bova perceived their intention, he told them not to quarrel for his sake, for that he would serve them ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various

... But, wrangle as they might over petty points of constitutional right or property administration, the heads of Glasgow College were guided in their general policy at this period by the wisest and most enlightened spirit of academic enlargement. Only a few years ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... though it at least attempts to fly higher than Antonine. It begins by one of those goguenardises which 1830 itself had loved, but it is not a good specimen. Two men who have determined on suicide—one by shooting, one by hanging—meet at the same tree in the Bois de Boulogne and wrangle about possession of the spot, till the aspirant to suspension per coll. recounts his history from the branch on which he is perched. After which an unlucky thirdsman, interfering, gets shot, and buried as one of the others—"which is witty, let us 'ope," as the poetical historian ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... is something like an Assize circuit, where certain great guns show everywhere, and smaller men drop in here and there, snatching a day or a brief, as the case may be. Sergeant Bluff and Sergeant Huff rustle and wrangle in every court, while Mr. Meeke and Mr. Sneeke enjoy their frights on the forensic arenas of their respective towns, on behalf of simple neighbours, who look upon them as thorough Solomons. So with hunts. Certain men who ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... so to speak. But they are not such fools and so forth that they can't do pretty well materially if once we hammer out a sane collective method of getting and using fuel. Which people generally will understand—in the place of our present methods of snatch and wrangle. Of that I am absolutely convinced. Some work, some help, some willingness you can get out of everybody. That's the red. And the same principle applies to most labour and property problems, to health, to education, to population, social relationships and war and peace. We haven't got the ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... only to say the word!" And so they would wrangle, she glorying in her power over the man who had so long triumphed over her, and he consoling himself with the hope that the day was not far distant which should bring him at once freedom and fortune. One day the chance came to him. His wife was ill, and the ungrateful scoundrel stole five hundred ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... this being thus separated from the rest of the world, and divided off, by the finger of God writing it upon her nature, to a peculiar and most noble office-work in society? It is not as a lawyer, to wrangle in courts; it is not as a clergyman, to preach in our pulpits; it is not as a physician, to live day and night in the saddle and sick room; it is not as a soldier, to go forth to battle; it is not as the mechanic, to lift the ponderous sledge, and sweat ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... Never did rival lawyers, after a wrangle at the bar, meet with more social good humor at a circuit dinner. The hunting season over, all past tricks and maneuvres are forgotten, all feuds and bickerings buried in oblivion. From the middle of June to the middle of September, all trapping is suspended; for the beavers ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... indeed sat down, and were kept to their respective seats. But Thersites alone, immediate in words, was wrangling; who, to wit, knew in his mind expressions both unseemly and numerous, so as idly, and not according to discipline, to wrangle with the princes, but [to blurt out] whatever seemed to him to be matter of laughter to the Greeks. And he was the ugliest man who came to Ilium. He was bandy-legged,[95] and lame of one foot; his ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... wrangle instantly began, Sanchez objecting to rubies and demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning the smallness of the diamonds ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... England on the 'grand tour,' gets into a wrangle with an old woman in the market-place; an old woman of nearly eighty years, with a cap as old and ideas as primitive as her dress, but with a sense of humour and natural combativeness that enables her to hold her own in lively sallies and smart repartees ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... petty pride. One has to note these things and decide a line of action. In the abstract the right course seems quite natural and easy, but in fact it is not so. A man finds another act towards him with unconscious impudence or arrogance, and at once flies into a rage; there is a fierce wrangle, and at the end he finds no purpose served, for nothing was at stake. He has lost his temper for nothing. In his heat he may tell you "he wouldn't let so-and-so do so-and-so," but on the same principle he ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... door from the inside, and looked through the glazed upper half. His stealthy movements and his strange appearance passed unnoticed. There was a noisy emigrant party in the cloak-room, taking out luggage deposited the night before; they were absorbed in their own affairs, and in some wrangle with the officials which involved a good deal of ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Back and forth they wrangle until my head is whirling around and I am ready to believe that I am in the day after ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... General Joubert explained the grounds which prompted him generously to restore my liberty. I am inclined to think that the Boers hate being beaten even in the smallest things, and always fight on the win, tie, or wrangle principle; but in my case I rejoice I am not beholden to them, and have not thus been disqualified ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... grand jury of Salem could be regulated on a similar plan. I was persuaded that government was a practical thing, made for the happiness of mankind, and not to furnish out a spectacle of uniformity to gratify the schemes of visionary politicians. Our business was to rule, not to wrangle; and it would have been a poor compensation that we had triumphed in a dispute, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... I should say, retreated. He wandered aimlessly about the palace, waiting for news and making wretched all those with whom he came in contact. The duchess was not feeling well; a wrangle with her was out of the question; besides, he would make himself hoarse. So he waited and waited, and re-read the princess' letter. At dinner he ate nothing; his replies were curt and surly. The Honorable Betty also ate nothing. She sat, wondering ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... has pilfered my pin, As I pledged the gay dame in the beaker; And now must we brawl for a brooch Like boys when they wrangle and tussle. Right well have I shafted my spear, Though I shot nothing more than the gravel: But sure, if I missed at my man, The moss has ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... early twilight, and underfoot the earth was half frozen. It was Christmas Eve. Also the War was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new menace. A man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the general air. Also there had been another wrangle among the men on ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... blockaded in the Thames, when the descent upon Saybrook was made, at the attack upon Stonington, and during those months when the enemy hovered upon the long exposed coast line, kept a large force of militia ready for duty. The state supported these troops, for, in the wrangle over officership, the national government ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... his party began to talk at the same time: Mr. Schulmeyer agreeing with Grist, and Mr. Cullop holding with Peck that Beasley had surely become insane; while the "Journal" man, returning, was certain that he had not been seen. Argument became a wrangle; excitement over the remarkable scene we had witnessed, and, perhaps, a certain sharpness partially engendered by the risk of freezing, led to some bitterness. High words were flung upon the wind. Eventually, Simeon Peck got the floor to ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington

... gesticulation, the noise and confusion was tremendous. I had not seen this for we were treating under fire and all were silent, those who had the best nerves were the speakers. If you want to make peace treat under fire; for me it will become a maxim. However after about two hours' wrangle, the General came up to me and said, "Are you not 'accord' with me? that you do not speak," so much had I gained of his mind that he would not act without me. In short I may now say, the 48 hours were granted. The deputation went to Turin, they got 48 hours more, and the ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... the wiser a higher meed should be given, and a lower to the less wise. And I as well as Critias would beg you, Protagoras and Socrates, to grant our request, which is, that you will argue with one another and not wrangle; for friends argue with friends out of good-will, but only adversaries and enemies wrangle. And then our meeting will be delightful; for in this way you, who are the speakers, will be most likely ...
— Protagoras • Plato

... to die in, with the best medical advice in the world. Plenty of people are starving and freezing to-day that we may have the means to die fashionably; ask THEM if they have any cause for complaint. Do you think I will wrangle over her body about the amount of money spent on her illness? What measure is that of the cause she had for complaint? I never grudged money to her—how could I, seeing that more than I can waste is given to me ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... of all," said Melnichansky, "we had to organise while we were fighting. The other side knew just what it wanted; but here the soldiers had their Soviet and the workers theirs.... There was a fearful wrangle over who should be Commander-in-chief; some regiments talked for days before they decided what to do; and when the officers suddenly deserted us, we had no battle-staff ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... checked. He swallowed the exceeding sourness of a retort undelivered, together with the feeling that she beat him in the wrangle by dint of her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Instantly a joyous wrangle of cries went up: "Girl's hair! Girl's hair! Old clothes! Old clothes!" A water-pistol discharged a chill stream into his face. Hands seized him, tearing ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... years of the French war, 1754-1760, the utter incompatibility between imperial theories on the one hand and colonial political habits on the other, could no longer be disregarded. In the midst of the struggle, the legislatures continued to wrangle with governors over points of privilege; they were slow to vote supplies; they were {27} dilatory in raising troops; they hung back from a jealous fear that their neighbour colonies might fail to do their share; they were ready to ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith

... their place, their value, their significance. But to the poet they seem only the laborious organising of his dreams, the slow and clumsy manufacture of what ought to be instinctive and natural. If the world must grow upon these lines, if men must toil in smoke-stained factories or wrangle in heated Parliaments, then it is well that the framework of life should be made as firm, as compact, as just as it can. But not here does his hope lie; he looks forward to a far different regeneration than can be effected by law and police. He looks forward to a time when ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... efficient, and the best companion that could be desired, at others, perhaps, hopelessly lazy and worthless, and even with a stock of liquor cached somewhere in the packs—Mr. Roosevelt helped to pack the horses, to bring the wood, to carry the water, to cook the food, to wrangle the stock, and generally to do the work of the camp, or of the trail, so long as any of it remained undone. His energy was indefatigable, and usually he infected his companion with his own enthusiasm and industry, though at times he might have ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... But nobody was wronged; his creditors were all paid in time, and his hands were at least clean of traffic in reversions, clerkships, tellerships and all the rest of the rich sinecures which it was thought no shame in those days for the aristocracy of the land and the robe to wrangle for, and gorge themselves upon, with the fierce voracity of famishing wolves. The most we can say is that Burke, like Pitt, was too deeply absorbed in beneficent service in the affairs of his country, to have for his own ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... jotted down the very words of their argument, but now it degenerates into a mere noisy wrangle with much polysyllabic scientific jargon upon each side. It is no doubt a privilege to hear two such brains discuss the highest questions; but as they are in perpetual disagreement, plain folk like Lord John and I get little that is positive from the exhibition. ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to show signs of increasing restlessness, and by the time Henry appeared to announce that Miss Arthur desired an interview with Dr. Le Guise, he began to wrangle with his physician and gave expression to ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... District was one of the closest. It happened, also, that our candidate (I am a Republican, and so is Mr. Strongitharm) was rather favorably inclined to the woman's cause. It happened, thirdly—and this is the seemingly insignificant pivot upon which we whirled into triumph—that he, Mr. Wrangle, and the opposing candidate, Mr. Tumbrill, had arranged to hold a joint meeting at Burroak. This meeting took place on a magnificent day, just after the oats-harvest; and everybody, for twenty miles around, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... correct, reverse, or affirm, any decree of a state court." This high assertion of federal authority was made by Jackson of Georgia in the course of a long legal argument. The debate did not follow sectional lines, and in general it was not unfairly described by Maclay as a lawyer's wrangle. The bill was put into shape by the Senate, and reached the House toward the close of the session when the struggle over the site of the national capital was overshadowing everything else. It was so generally believed that nothing important could be gained by attempts at amendment that, after ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... decided, whatever may be said by any doctor o' them a'. As for life and death—they are no' in the doctors' hands, though they whiles seem to think it. I'm going hame, whether it be to live or to die. But I want no vexation about it; I'm no' able to wrangle with them. But if you were to speak to Doctor Fleming—if you were to tell him that you are willing to go with me—to do your best for me, he would make no words about it, but ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... word, my only hope is in Publius! Let him become, let him become a tribune by all means, if for no other reason, yet that you may be brought back from Epirus! For I don't see how you can possibly afford to miss him, especially if he shall elect to have a wrangle with me! But, seriously, if anything of the sort occurs, you would, I am certain, hurry back. But even supposing this not to be the case, yet whether he runs amuck or helps to raise the state, I promise myself a fine spectacle, if only I may enjoy it with you sitting by ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... immediately conveyed the larger share of the ready into his pocket, according to an excellent maxim of his—"First secure what share you can before you wrangle for the rest"; and then, turning to his companion, he asked him whether he intended to keep all that sum himself. "I grant you took it," Wild said; "but, pray, who proposed or counselled the taking of it? Can you say that you have done more than execute my scheme? ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... across away from the board, and said—"Home I will go, and it were more seemly that thou shouldest wrangle with those of thine own household, and not under other men's roofs; but as for Njal, I am his debtor for much honour, and never will I be egged on ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... 'is essentially a chivalrous nature. At any crisis demanding a display of the finer feelings he is there with the goods before you can turn round. His friends frequently wrangle warmly as to whether he is most like Bayard, Lancelot, or Happy Hooligan. Some say one, some the other. It seems that yesterday you saved him from a watery grave without giving him time to explain that he could save himself. What could he do? He said to himself, "She must never know!" and acted ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... wrangling spent (As Courts must wrangle to decide well). Religion to St. Luke's was sent, And Royalty packt ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... the sacred precincts to fulfil the vows and exercise the grace among the common scenes and homely details of daily life. To many, nay, to most, life would not be one continuous communion service; the holy awe would of necessity fade away; the hymns and prayers be exchanged for the harsh wrangle and barter of a work-day world; temptation was awaiting many of those new church members in unexpected places, and the evil nature within, not yet wholly subdued by divine grace, would make the pathway of holiness a very narrow one, along which untrained feet would often stumble. But the ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... solemn cathedral, or a busy town piled up, with church and castle high aloft and a still, transparent lake below. But through it all, and underlying it all, is Bellevue street, with the dirty men and women, who scream and shout at each other and wrangle in its filthy courts and alleys. Still, God knows that I don't repent, and that I wish ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... earth-stained knees and hands—the latter full of violets—reluctantly descended. Adding these to the basket already overflowing, they had a short wrangle as to who should carry it, and then Katherine turned her steps homeward. Errington passed the bridle over his arm, and to her ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... and ride back to a smith-shop. And I have seen him sit over a blacksmith with his narrow face thrust up under the horse's belly, and put his finger on the place where every nail was to go in and the place where it was to come out, and growl and curse and wrangle, until, if I had been that smith, I should have ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... had played ill providence to themselves. In the second, no maid would covet him whom fate had given to another, it were too fatiguing, or if such a thing DID happen, then one of them would waive his claims, for no man or woman ever born was worth a wrangle, and it is allowed us to barter ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... these years? Do you see through me? Do you know me?—No: don't speak: I see your answer already—Your own love blinds you! Ha! I am a good man!—I don't drink, I don't swear, I am respectable, I don't blaspheme like Bletchley! Oh yes, and I am a scholar: I can cackle in Greek: I can wrangle about God's name: I know Latin and Hebrew and all the cursed little pedantries of my trade! But do you know what I am? Do you know what your husband is in the sight of God? He is ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... beneath and meteors from above, Portentous, unexampled, unexplained, Have kindled beacons in the skies, and the old And crazy earth has had her shaking fits More frequent, and foregone her usual rest. Is it a time to wrangle, when the props And pillars of our planet seem to fail, And nature with a dim and sickly eye To wait the close of all? But grant her end More distant, and that prophecy demands A longer respite, unaccomplished yet; Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... smooth amber-white skin, of the thick, wavy, dark hair, was in his nostrils. And in a languorous murmur she soothed his subjection to a deep sleep with, "As long as you give me what I want from you, and I give you what you want from me why should we wrangle?" ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... obstinacy, but a certain proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my amicable adversaries. They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but huntsmen questing after elements of truth. Neither must they be boys to be instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I may, wrangle and agree on equal terms. We must reach some solution, some shadow of consent; for without that, eager talk becomes a torture. But we do not wish to reach it cheaply, or quickly, or without the tussle and ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... stayin'. I'm tellin' you private that I'm goin' to wrangle dudes next season. I made him a good proposition and I ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... apartment. Their neighbors had children, and the children did not want to go to bed. The parents nagged the children and each other. The wrangle was insufferable. And the idea came to Kedzie and Gilfoyle that children were one of the liabilities of their own marriage. They were afraid of each other, now, as well as of the world. If only they had not ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... are not only imminent but actual. The whole effort to support a Christian education in the public schools is sometimes called a "bootless wrangle." One section is thrown over towards secularism, pure and simple, in recoiling from Church-education exclusive and reactionary. The leading of the little child, the favorite indication of the millennium's arrival, is frustrated amid the clamor of the free thinkers and the uncertainty of ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... varry, Which when we oft haue fetcht from farre, With us they neuer tarry: Some worldly crosse doth still attend, What long we haue in spinning, And e'r we fully get the end We lose of our beginning. 330 Our pollicies so peevish are, That with themselues they wrangle, And many times become the snare That soonest vs intangle; For that the Loue we beare our Friends Though nere so strongly grounded, Hath in it certaine oblique ends If to the bottome sounded: Our owne well wishing making it, A pardonable Treason; 340 For that is deriud from witt, And ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... destitute of furniture, crowded with his wife and children, pale, hungry, and emaciated; the man cursing their lamentations, staggering to the tap-room, from whence he had just returned, followed by his wife and a sickly infant, clamouring for bread; and heard the street-wrangle and noisy recrimination that his striking her occasioned. And then imagination led us to some metropolitan workhouse, situated in the midst of crowded streets and alleys, filled with noxious vapours, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... acquaintance did we possess in St. Petersburg, and even Anna Thedorovna and my father had come to loggerheads with one another, owing to the fact that he owed her money. In fact, our only visitors were business callers, and as a rule these came but to wrangle, to argue, and to raise a disturbance. Such visits would make my father look very discontented, and seem out of temper. For hours and hours he would pace the room with a frown on his face and a brooding silence on his lips. Even my mother did not dare address him at these ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Waldorf that very day and returned to Hanging Rock. They alternated between silence and the coarsest, crudest quarrelings, for neither had the intelligence to quarrel wittily or the refinement to quarrel artistically. As soon as they arrived at the Gower house, Mildred was dragged into the wrangle. ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... arrived at Plymouth attended by an Episcopal minister, William Morell, and a company of settlers, whom he planted at Wessagusset. He remained in New England throughout the winter, and in the effort to exert his authority had a long wrangle with Weston. In the spring of 1624 he received news from his father that discouraged his further stay. It seems that in March, 1624, a committee of Parliament, at the head of which was Sir Edward Coke, had reported the charter of the Council ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... The wrangle, of which the foregoing speeches were a part, took place in Frankfort, Kentucky, on the morning of December 2, 1806. The town was thronged with zealous partisans, Federalists and Republicans, from ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... made by the men to secure the coveted loot, a race taking place sometimes between a European and one of our native soldiers as to who should first reach the body. The kammerbund was quickly torn off and the money snatched up, a wrangle often ensuing among the men as to the division of the booty. In this manner many soldiers succeeded, to my knowledge, in securing large sums of money; one in particular, a Grenadier of my regiment, after killing a sepoy, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... with pope and devil, Handel and Gluck had their wars with the hostile cabals, Henry Clay had his John Randolph and Andrew Jackson—and Bridget and Catharine have their disturbing and absorbing questions of 'wages,' and 'privileges,' and other matters; and a wrangle that the mistress forgets in a day, the maid carefully cherishes in her memory, and makes it the theme of widest discussion. Without resorting, then, to the improbable notion of the existence of a secret society among the servants, through ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... own motion made ready for statehood; he expressed a hope that New Mexico would shortly follow her example, and recommended that both be admitted into the Union with such constitutions as they might present. Immediately, the House, where the free-soilers held a balance of power, fell into a long wrangle over the speakership; and the Senate was soon in fierce debate over certain anti-slavery resolutions presented from the legislature of Vermont. The North seemed to be united on the Wilmot Proviso as it had never before been united on any measure of opposition to slavery, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... convocation still continued to wrangle with their superiors; and though they joined the upper house in a congratulatory address to the queen on the success of her arms, they resolved to make application to the commons against the union. The queen being apprised of their design, desired the archbishop ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... earnest entreaties that His Majesty would instantly send every soldier that could be spared, nay, that he would come himself to save his northern kingdom. The factions of the Parliament House, awestruck by the common danger, forgot to wrangle. Courtiers and malecontents with one voice implored the Lord High Commissioner to close the session, and to dismiss them from a place where their deliberations might soon be interrupted by the mountaineers. It was seriously considered ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... necessary, in common cases, to use long explanations, and familiar illustrations, and of whom it maybe not unreasonably suspected, that the same want of education, which makes them ignorant, may make them petulant, and at once incline them to wrangle, and deprive them of the means of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... a summer's day, But in its sunshine we, like fools, did play; Or else fall out, and with each other wrangle, And did, instead of work, not much but jangle. And if our sun seems angry, hides his face, Shall it go down, shall night possess this place? Let not the voice of night birds us afflict, And of our misspent ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Simon Leroux," said Jacqueline, standing up before him, as indomitable in spirit as he. "All your plots and schemes mean nothing to me. My only aim is to take my father away from here, from you and M. d'Epernay, and let you wrangle over your spoil. There are more than four-legged wolves, M. Leroux; there are human ones, and, like the others, when food is scarce ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... wrangle between the two was brought to a head in 1885, when Whistler gave his famous Ten o'clock discourse on Art. This lecture was infinitely better than any of Oscar Wilde's. Twenty odd years older than Wilde, Whistler was a master of all his resources: he was not only witty, but ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... godly men of the Established Church of the land. I have seen and heard much in yon great city, and methinks that all creeds have much that is true—much that is the same; but it seems the nature of man to fight and wrangle over the differences, instead of rejoicing in the unity of a common faith; wherefore there be misery and strife and jealousy abounding, and the adversaries may well blaspheme. But I came not to talk such matters with thee, sweet sister; they baffle ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... "Don't set yourself to wrangle with me, husband," said Teresa; "I speak as God pleases, and don't deal in out-of-the-way phrases; and I say if you are bent upon having a government, take your son Sancho with you, and teach him from this time on how to hold ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... but the doors of their compartments are not locked. It has been found by experience that English travellers object to being imprisoned without trial, and quote regulations of the Board of Trade forbidding the locking of both doors of a railway carriage. There is nothing to be gained by a public wrangle with an angry Englishman. He cannot be got to understand that laws, those of the Board of Trade or any other, are not binding on Irish officials. There is only one way of treating him without loss of dignity, and that is to give in to him at once, ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... Then followed a wrangle five minutes long between this curious, handsome, still-faced woman and the porter who, after the eastern fashion, lashed himself into a frenzy over the sum she offered, and at length began to call her ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... swarthy face. It played flittingly around that strange look of ruined human dignity, like a wan beam of late sunset about a crumbling and forgotten temple. He put his hand hurriedly to his forehead, as if he were trying to remember—like a lunatic, who, having heard only the wrangle of fiends in his delirium, suddenly in a conscious moment, perceives the familiar voice of love. But who could this be, to whom mere human sympathy was ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... that's not my fortune there's no meaning in it to me. But I should like to see the fun, if there's nothing of the black art in it, and if a man may look on without cost or getting into any dangerous wrangle?" ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... for this waste-paper; how do you think I could ever fill it, or with what? I am not always in the humour to wrangle and dispute. For example now, I had rather agree to what you say, than tell you that Dr. Taylor (whose devote you must know I am) says there is a great advantage to be gained in resigning up one's will to the command of another, because the same action which ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... burgesses could refuse indeed the invitation to contribute to the "free aids" demanded by the royal officers, but the suspension of their markets or trading privileges brought them in the end to submission. Each of these "free aids" however had to be extorted after a long wrangle between the borough and the officers of the Exchequer; and if the towns were driven to comply with what they considered an extortion they could generally force the Crown by evasions and delays to a compromise and ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... hearing of the case a violent altercation had taken place between them, but when the Court rose they left the building together, walking amicably to their lodgings. Two men who had been in Court and had heard their wrangle were following behind them, when one said to the other: "If you was in trouble, Bill, which o' them two tip-top 'uns would you have to defend you?"—"Well, Jim," was the reply, "I should pitch upon this 'un," pointing to the ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... great source of contention between the author and the printer, and, altogether, is an unsatisfactory item. A printer is bound, with certain reservations, to follow the "copy" supplied. If he does that and the author does not make any alterations there is no extra charge and nothing to wrangle about. A small correction, trivial as it may seem to the inexperienced, may involve much trouble to the printer. A word inserted or deleted may cause a page to be altered throughout, line by line, and a few words may possibly affect several pages. The charges made for corrections are based ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... threshold. Mrs. Flanagan had, somehow, got there before him, with a lamp, and he followed her down through the dancing shadows, with blurred eyes. On the lower landing he stopped to hear the jar of some noisy wrangle, thick with oaths, from the bar-room. He listened for a moment, and then turned to the staring stupor of Mrs. Flanagan's ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... short dresses and a bunch of curls. For some reason my idea of self has never advanced beyond this point. The long dress and the hair piled high will never seem natural. Sometimes I enjoy this duality and again I do not. Sometimes the two parts mingle delightfully together, again they wrangle atrociously, while I (there seems to be a third part of me) sit off ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... subtlety, or passion; it degrades the story which we owe to Dante and not to history (for, in itself, the story is a quite ordinary story of adultery: Dante and the flames of his hell purged it), it degrades it almost out of all recognition. These middle-aged people, who wrangle shrewishly behind the just turned back of the husband and almost in the hearing of the child, are people in whom it is impossible to be interested, apart from any fine meanings put into them in the acting. And yet, since M. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... of his opponents could have put forth. With an eye ever open to that supreme Judge of all our controversies, who listens to them on His throne on high, he had with conscientious fairness admitted what he saw to be good and just on the side of his adversaries, conceded what in the confused wrangle of conflicting claims he judged ought to be conceded. But after all admissions and all concessions, the comparative strength of his own case appeared all the more undeniable. He had stripped it of its weaknesses, its incumbrances, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... cannot wrangle about. Sensible people will agree to a middle course founded upon a few general axioms and propositions about which, right or wrong, they will not think it worth while to wrangle for some time, and those who reject these can be put into mad-houses. The middle ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... brother he was insolent; with his apprentice he was sullen; and with his associates at the old Falcone he played the demagogue. The reason of these phases was very simple. His wife could not oppose him, Don Paolo would not wrangle with him, Gianbattista imposed upon him by his superior calm and strength of character, and, lastly, his socialist friends applauded him and nattered his vanity. It is impossible for a weak man to appear always the same, and his weakness is made the more noticeable when he affects strength. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... "we will not wrangle about it. But hearken. Hard by in a pleasant nook of the meadows have I set up my tent; and although it be not as big as the King's pavilion, yet is it fair enough. Wilt thou not come thither with me and rest thee to-night; and to-morrow we ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... day. The hunters were noisy and excited. A group pounced upon the broken tusk—for a mammoth tusk, or a piece of one, was a prize in a cave dwelling—and there was prospect of a struggle, but grim voices checked the wrangle of those who had seized upon this portion of the spoil and it was laid aside, to be apportioned later. The feast was the thing to be ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... Salvation Army is to save, not to wrangle about the name of the pathfinder. Dionysos or another: what does ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... again, why will I thus entangle Myself with metaphysics? None can hate So much as I do any kind of wrangle; And yet, such is my folly, or my fate, I always knock my head against some angle About the present, past, or future state. Yet I wish well to Trojan and to Tyrian, For I ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... soft Furioso and a clever Adagio of friendship. You will be able to learn various things from it; that men can hate with as uncommon delicacy as you can love; that they then remold a wrangle, after it is over, into a distinction; and that you may make as many observations about it as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... owners of the weird mining-machines already described found themselves at a disadvantage, while those who carried merely the pick, shovel, and small personal equipment were enabled to make a flying start. On the beach there was invariably an immense wrangle over the hiring of boats to go up the river. These were a sort of dug-out with small decks in the bow and in the stern, and with low roofs of palmetto leaves amidships. The fare to Cruces was about fifteen dollars a man. Nobody was in a hurry but ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... first served, is the motto; and often you have to wait for hours together, sticking to your position (like one of an Indian file of merchants' clerks getting letters out of the post-office), ere you have a chance to occupy the pedestal of the match-tub. Often the crowd of quarrelsome candidates wrangle and fight for precedency, while at all times the interval is employed by the garrulous in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... kitchen steps. A woman, with a bucket of soapsuds at her feet, was wringing out a homespun shirt in the yard, and as they entered the little gate, she looked at them with a defiance which was evidently the result of a late domestic wrangle. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... drink again, and to judiciously wrangle as to which was the better, a woman with a gamy odour or a woman who soaped herself well all over; a thin one or a stout one; and as the company comprised the flower of wisdom it was decided that the best was the one a man had all to himself like a plate of warm mussels, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... game, swept every other feeling away, marvelously mastering the sense of pain that had ground mercilessly at every nerve. Then came that small voice which a man hears sometimes in the night stillness and sometimes in the blare of daylight wrangle. And all suddenly I knew that He who notes the sparrow's fall knew that I was alone with death, slow-lingering, inch-creeping death, out on that wide, lonely plain. The glare on the waters softened. The heat fell away. The despair ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... object to this whole Convention; and if we want to consult them, let us adjourn sine die. If we are loyal to our highest convictions, we need not care how far it may lead. For truth, like water, will find its own level. No, friends, in the name of consistency let us not wrangle here simply because we associate the name of woman with human justice and human rights. Although I always like to see opposition on any subject, for it elicits truth much better than any speech, still I think it will be exceedingly inconsistent ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the end of five days' wrangle and recrimination, during which the members called each other "disorganizers," "bolters," "traitors," "disunionists," "abolitionists," accompanied by violent threats, it disrupted again, its chairman, Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, led the bolters and was followed by the delegates generally ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... pages they repose in the Smithsonian Institute, and after a learned wrangle between savants of all countries—lasting many months—it was agreed that the poor explorer must have lost his mind and that the narrative of the Flying Men was the offspring of a ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... Winnie, but she was not clever at music. Beatrice had made a great effort to teach her the piano, with poor success, for she was not a docile or attentive pupil, and the lessons generally involved a wrangle between the two sisters, Beatrice losing her patience, and Gwen arguing hotly. Finally Father had put a stop to the lessons altogether, on the ground that it was sheer waste of time, and Gwen was better employed at ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... mercy's sake, to your prayers, dinna wrangle about your joes, bairns,' cried Madame de Ste. Petronelle. ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... breach, rupture, dispute, dissension, bickering, wrangle, broil, squabble, row, rumpus, ruction, spat, tiff, fuss, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... I am over-patient with you! Are we to wrangle at every step before you'll take it? I will have your assistance through this matter as you swore to give it. Come, truss me that fellow, and have ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... illogical, of course; it left the question whether slaves are population or chattels for theorizers to wrangle over, and for future events to decide. It was easy for James Wilson to show that there was neither rhyme nor reason in it: but he subscribed to it, nevertheless, just as the northern abolitionists, Rufus King and Gouverneur Morris, joined with Washington and Madison, and with the pro-slavery ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... two shoulders rounded and hunched over his chest. His head ran up to a point, but there was little hair on the top of it. Achilles and Ulysses hated him worst of all, for it was with them that he was most wont to wrangle; now, however, with a shrill squeaky voice he began heaping his abuse on Agamemnon. The Achaeans were angry and disgusted, yet none the less he kept on brawling and bawling ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... I know they wrangle On points I dare not disentangle, That one of them's a Democrat And t' other's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various

... After a wrangle as to my having authority to make a record in the log-book, the prosecuting attorney succeeded in having the book admitted as evidence, and read to the jury ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... basket of broken china on his arm, while the red-haired girl chased on ahead with an empty milk can, running to make up for lost time and not be late with the motormen's supper? He must wait and help Judith carry the basket. She had no time to wrangle with him about whether he should or should not wait. Supper was cooked but it must be packed properly and the finishing touches put to it. Mrs. Buck was wandering around the kitchen making futile attempts to help. Jeff, who was sitting outside on a bench under the syringa ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... Gibson! you do not treat her like your own child.' But in the midst of this wrangle Molly stole out, and went in search of Cynthia. She thought she bore an olive-branch of healing in the sound of her father's just spoken words: 'I do love her almost as if she were my own child.' But Cynthia was locked into her room, and refused to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... however, at the town meeting and spoke in favor of the new school building. Janice had a full report of it afterward from Marty, who squeezed in at the back with several of the other boys and drank in the long and tedious wrangle between the partisans in the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... Benjamin Bat could make a longer journey between two points than anybody else in Pleasant Valley. And there were some that disputed Mr. Crow's statement. Jasper Jay even went out of his way to tell Mr. Crow that he had heard of his remark, and that he was mistaken. And they had such a wrangle that they annoyed Mr. Hermit Thrush, way over on the other side of Cedar Swamp. Old Mr. Crow and Jasper Jay were cousins. And everybody knows that there is nothing worse than ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... across your sun system and learning of your trouble I have had my entire trading fleet of a hundred ships in orbit about this planet while all your multitudinous political subdivisions have filled the air with talk and wrangle. ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik

... hatred of the commander; hatred of each other; petty squabblings leading on to tragedies—as minor ills were magnified into catastrophes and little injuries into deadly wrongs. Strictly in keeping with the mean traditions of the Arctic is the fact that the point of departure of the final mutiny was a wrangle that arose over the ownership of "a ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier

... had taken an observation at noon as usual, the skipper of late leaving that operation entirely to me, for he knew Mr Macdougall would be certain to get a sight too, if only in order to have a wrangle with me as to the right position of the ship. Having made out the reckoning with a stop watch, I was busily engaged marking out our place on the chart on top of the cabin sky-light, as it was a fine day, with a pair of callipers and parallel rulers, when the Scottish ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... are hollows there, near the ears, on each side, since that week when love was done to death before my eyes and died—intestate—leaving his substance to be divided amongst indifferent heirs. They wrangle for what he has left, but he himself is gone, beyond hearing or caring, and, thank God, beyond suffering. But the ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford



Words linked to "Wrangle" :   herd, scrap, brawl, wrangling, bargaining, row, dustup, fracas, argufy, words, haggle, tiff, spat, altercate, conflict, pettifoggery, bicker, squabble, difference of opinion, bust-up, difference, quarrel, fuss, run-in, wrangler, affray, altercation, haggling



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