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Wrangle   /rˈæŋgəl/   Listen
Wrangle

noun
1.
An angry dispute.  Synonyms: dustup, quarrel, row, run-in, words.  "They had words"
2.
An instance of intense argument (as in bargaining).  Synonyms: haggle, haggling, wrangling.



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"Wrangle" Quotes from Famous Books



... saw your face I resolved To honour and renown you; If now I be disdained I wish my heart had never known you. What! I that loved, and you that liked, Shall we begin to wrangle? No, no, no, my heart ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... to say to his reverend brother of Kildrummie, as they went home from the Presbytery together, "who gets unto a wrangle with his farmers about a collection is either an upstart or he is a fool, and in neither case ought he to be a minister of the Church of Scotland." And the two old men would lament the decay of the ministry over their wine in Kildrummie Manse—being both of the same school, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... accidentally happening 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

... wrangle, but I must keep hold of these threads that you seem always to drop. And then there is another point: when I talked of leaving home, it was not I who suggested that ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... he was not infallible. It may have been an error that he ruled virtually without a Parliament, since it was better that a good measure should be defeated than that the cause of liberty should be trodden under foot. It was better that parliaments should wrangle and quarrel than that there should be no representation of the nation at all. And it was an undoubted error to transmit his absolute authority to his son, for this was establishing a new dynasty of kings. One of the worst things which Napoleon ever did was to seat his brothers on the old ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... Masters give a curious story under the year 1213. O'Donnell More sent his steward to Connaught to collect his tribute. On his way he visited the poet Murray O'Daly, and began to wrangle with him, "although his lord had given him no instructions to do so." The poet's ire was excited. He killed him on the spot with a sharp axe—an unpleasant exhibition of literary justice—and then fled into Clanrickarde for safety. O'Donnell determined ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... the fee as a birthday present. The wife would be indignant at the suggestion of good money being thus wasted. "No, John, dear," she would unselfishly reply, "you need the lessons more than I do. It would be a shame for me to take them away from you," and they would wrangle upon the subject for the rest of ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... not very effective in the contest of tongue between his mother and himself. As the talk went on he foresaw that he was to be beaten; yet he persisted, for he loved a joy-wrangle, as he called it, with his mother. He had argued with her many a time, just to see her in a harmless passion, and note how the youth of her came back, giving high colour to the wrinkled face, and how the eyes shone with a brightness which had been constant in them long ago. They ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... allowed herself to be led into a friendly wrangle, inwardly congratulating herself upon having successfully side-tracked the topic of matrimony. The subject cropped up intermittently in their intercourse with each other and, from long experience, Ann had brought the habit of steering ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... 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 ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... "Who are you that wrangle before me, talking of the death of kings and saying that you will wed the Royal princess? One more such word and you shall be driven into banishment. Hearken now. Almost am I minded to declare my daughter, the Royal Princess, sole heiress to the throne, seeing that in ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... Kensington, where Mrs. Masham was got to see her children for two days. I dined, or rather supped, with Lord Treasurer, and stayed till after ten. Tisdall(21) and his family are gone from hence, upon some wrangle with the family. Yesterday I had two letters brought me to Mr. Masham's; one from Ford, and t'other from our little MD, N.21. I would not tell you till to-day, because I would not. I won't answer it till the next, because I have slipped two days by being at Windsor, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... most of the things which many put into such books, and put in many which most leave out. It would have been a book to help people to live right and feel right, and not to dream, or speculate, or wrangle. If he had been a preacher, he would have filled his sermons with the living words of Moses and the Prophets, of Christ and His Apostles, and pressed them on the consciences of his hearers with all his might. He would often have "reasoned of righteousness, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... a great deal of fruitless argument on both sides, the Justice said: "I won't wrangle with you over the battlefield, although I still persist in my belief that Hermann defeated Varus somewhere around this neighborhood. As a matter of fact it doesn't make any particular difference to me where it happened—the question is one ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... was very busy. At night he was too tired to confront the inevitable wrangle with Natalie that any protest about Graham always evoked, and he was anxious not to disturb the new rapprochement with the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... hastily trained citizens—bakers, commercial travellers, clerks, small tradesmen—butchered like rabbits but fighting for their country, dying for it—and all the time those blackguardly stump orators at home turned their backs to France and thought the time opportune to wrangle for a rise in wages and bring the country to the very verge of a universal strike. It didn't come off, I know, but there were very few people who really understood how near we were to it. Dartrey, we sacrifice too much of our real ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Pepper had a sharp wrangle with Josiah Crabtree. The dictatorial teacher accused Pepper of copying an example in algebra from another cadet, and a ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield

... custom asks, Nor wrangle for this lesser claim; It is not to be destitute To have the thing without ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... disciples might have found something better to talk about on the road from Caesarea, where they had heard from Jesus of His sufferings, than this miserable wrangle about rank! Singularly enough, each announcement of the Cross seems to have provoked something of the sort. Probably they understood little of His meaning, but hazily thought that the crisis was at hand when He should establish the kingdom; and so their ambition, rather ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... great and capable; or if not, these shrink from a contest, the weapons to be used wherein are unfit for a gentleman to handle. Then the habits of unprincipled advocates in law courts are naturalized in Senates, and pettifoggers wrangle there, when the fate of the nation and the lives of millions are at stake. States are even begotten by villainy and brought forth by fraud, and rascalities are justified by legislators claiming to be honorable. Then contested elections ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... 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 ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... Sabsovich, emerging 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 cows. They ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... 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 killed him with ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... out from 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 ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... "I will not wrangle with you," he said. "I think the gentleman deserves death. But because I know very well what it is to love truly, why, I will let you save him if ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... plan of plundering each other produces nothing. It only wastes. All the material over which the protected interests wrangle and grab must be got from somebody outside of their circle. The talk is all about the American laborer and American industry, but in every case in which there is not an actual production of wealth by industry there are two laborers and two industries to be considered—the ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... couch by his wife's side. "Look here, Philippa, don't let's wrangle," he begged. "I'm afraid you'll have to make up your mind to see a good deal less of ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... 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 every variety ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... the Sea-eagle, "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 ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... 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, "fine fellow of his hands." ENTELLUS, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various

... heretics ought to be tolerated. For the Apostle says (2 Tim. 2:24, 25): "The servant of the Lord must not wrangle . . . with modesty admonishing them that resist the truth, if peradventure God may give them repentance to know the truth, and they may recover themselves from the snares of the devil." Now if heretics are not tolerated but put to death, they lose the opportunity ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... or have thoughte me worthy to have byn acqueynted with these matters, (whiche yo{u} might well have donne without anye whatsoeuer dispargement to yo{ur}selfe,) you sholde haue understoode before the impressione, althoughe this whiche I here write ys not nowe uppon selfe will or fonnd conceyte to wrangle for one asses shadowe, or to seke a knott in a rushe, but in frendlye sorte to bringe truthe to lighte, athinge whiche I wolde desire others to use towardes mee in whatsoeuer shall fall oute of my penne. Wherefore I will here shewe such thinges as, in ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne

... heart was full of good news, he had a wild desire to rush home with it to her who was his home. How often he had left her in the morning after a wrangle, and hurried back to her at night bearing glad tidings, the quarrel forgotten beyond the need of any treaty. And she would be there among their children, beaming welcome from ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... interview with the Lieutenant. The arrival of the freight steamer afforded him some distraction, but there was only a small consignment for the store, and that was quickly disposed of; so, leaving the other citizens of Flambeau to wrangle over their private merchandise, he went back to his solitary vigil, which finally became so unbearable that he sought to escape his thoughts, or at least to drown them for a while, amid the lights and life and laughter of Stark's saloon. Being but a child by nature, his means of distraction ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... the elder. "Are we children or slaves that we should wrangle thus? Have we met here in order to rid the Empire of an abominable and bloodthirsty tyrant, or are we mere vulgar conspirators pursuing our own ends? There was no thought in our host's mind of supreme power, O Hortensius! nor in thine, I'll vow. As for me, ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... a year now they wrangle, Ah! yes, for quite three seventy-two, Being ruled now by this king, now that one, As ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... learned from the written Word of God, and have heard from the lips of 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 wisdom of the wisest. Keep ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... going into the schoolmaster's house, and I heard a fierce wrangle going on between a man and a woman near the cottages to the west, that lie below the road. While I was listening to them several women came down to listen also from behind the wall, and told me that the people who were fighting were near relations who lived side by side ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... institution of primary necessity, might have been maintained if it had appeared only on state occasions, but as it was, there was a daily wrangle over precedence; it ceased to be a matter of art or court ceremonial, it became a question of power. And if from the outset the Crown lacked an adviser equal to so great a crisis, the aristocracy was still more lacking in a sense ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... tall talk, and Jared sitting on a keg in a corner with little Tom Williams, the stone mason, beside him on a box, and Denny Hogan near him on a vacant work bench and Ira Dooley on the window ledge would wrangle until bed time many a night as Dick Bowman, wagging a warlike head, and Casper pegging away at his shoes, tore society into shreds, smashed idols and overturned civilization. Up to this point there was complete agreement between the iconoclasts. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... affairs which were entirely outside of the proper scope of his office. "It is hard," said he, "that I, who give others no trouble with my quarrels, should be plagued with all the perversities of those who think fit to wrangle with ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... the group, and the conversation broke and flew into sharp fragments. McGlenn and Richmond began to wrangle. ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... dead, because then their dead will be restored to them; and the one who shall be the greatest hero in their minds and hearts will be the great Messiah, who has brought the people the unspeakable blessings. Then will the people assemble, not to discuss politics, nor to wrangle over who shall hold the offices, but to improve their minds and to study the beauties and wonders of God's creation and to sing songs of gladness to his praise.—Isaiah ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... Buel, sit 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 ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... stones, if the fancy takes you, or confiscate their property. The informer's tongue has no terrors for you; no burglar will scale or undermine your walls in search of gold; you are not troubled with book-keeping or debt-collecting; you have no rascally steward to wrangle with; none of the thousand worries of the rich distract you. No, you patch your shoe, and you take your tenpence; and at dusk up you jump from your bench, get a bath if you are in the humour for it, buy yourself a haddock or some sprats or a few heads of garlic, and make merry therewith; Poverty, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... merest doggerel! Nay, nay!—the 'Ruva-Kalama,' is the achievement of one great mind,—not twenty Oruzels were born in succession to write it,—there was, there could be only one, and he, by right supreme, is chief of the Bards Immortal! As well might fools hereafter wrangle together and say there were many Sah-lumas! ... only I have taken good heed posterity shall know there was only ONE,— unmatched for love-impassioned singing throughout the length ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... had come to life, and a pair of innocent and yet wise grey eyes that read and win the heart. He is shy and does not shine before strangers. I have said that he is unselfish and brave. When there is the usual wrangle about going to bed, up he gets in his sedate way. "I will go first," says he, and off he goes, the eldest, that the others may have the few extra minutes while he is in his bath. As to his courage, he is absolutely lion-hearted where he can help ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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 ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... you not that to keep men of one opinion, the only way is to slay them that be of the contrary? Living men must differ. Only the dead ne'er wrangle touching aught." ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... 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 brain crazed ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... going on a striking domestic wrangle, for in a moment they saw that two of the rams were having a set-to among the bushes on the side-hill, while several mild-eyed Nannies ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... whole fleet with its spoils had been floating steadily down with the powerful current. Amidst the wrangle of contending voices, and with some angry altercation, the police boat and its accompanying consorts were towing the yet unknown object and its silent burden towards ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... how animals that are accustomed to confer together, by speech or otherwise, concerning designs which they may be pursuing in common, will wrangle with thousandfold diversity of opinion; let him reflect how often something has to be undone, destroyed, and done over again; how at one time too many hands come forward, and at another too few; what running to and fro there is before each has found his right place; ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... friendliness, a readiness to do him honor, she strained her 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 the evening. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... understand. The place is a great cemetery. It lies under the hot sun of the tropics. The sky is always blue; the sun is always hot. It is girdled by the sea. It is always silent; for the Indian children do not laugh or shout, and the Indian women are too much awed by the presence of the dead to wrangle; always silent, save for the crying of the sea-birds on the rock. There are no letters, no newspapers, no friends, no duties—none save when a ship puts in; and then, for the doctor, farewell rest, farewell sleep, until the bill of health is clean. Once a fortnight or so, if the ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... me to the point about this young feller that's going to be hung," said Bob, tapping the newspaper that lay upon the bench. "I don't know what would lie between two young women in a wrangle of that sort; some would get over it quick, but some would never sleep soundly any more not for a minute of their mortal lives. Edie must have been one of that sort. There's people living there now as could tell a lot if they'd a mind to it. Some knowed all about ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... my soule; goe cheerefully To thy owne Heaven, from whence it first let downe. Thou loathly[82] this imprisoning flesh putst on; Now, lifted up, thou ravisht shalt behold The truth of things at which we wonder here, And foolishly doe wrangle on beneath; And like a God shalt walk the spacious ayre, And see what even to conceit's deni'd. Great soule oth' world, that through the parts defus'd Of this vast All, guid'st what thou dost informe; You blessed mindes that from the [S]pheares you move, Looke on mens actions not ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... 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 ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... the convent school on the other, with all the other proselytizers that lie between them, they must not be burdened with idle controversies as to whether there was ever such a person as Jesus or not. When Hume said that Joshua's campaigns were impossible, Whately did not wrangle about it: he proved, on the same lines, that the campaigns of Napoleon were impossible. Only fictitious characters will stand Hume's sort of examination: nothing will ever make Edward the Confessor ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... 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 the next day dawned, all the people prepared and came again ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... voice. "Hello, Frank..." There was the same eager quaver. "Still pretty jammed, Frank... But we know about it here—from Art... Some of the Pallastown convalescents will be migrating your way... I'll wrangle free and come along... Maybe ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... most amiable, generous wrangle as to which of the parents should enjoy the adult form of amusement. But while the Professor grew more and more half-hearted in his protestations that he really didn't care where he went, Mrs. Marshall grew more and more positive that he must not ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... dispute about this nice distinction or that. There could be no doubt that Christ had died and risen, and was alive for evermore. There was no place for controversy or opinions when here was a mere simple, indisputable, but most awful fact. Did you want to wrangle about the aspect of the fact, the evidence, the what not? St. Francis had no mission to argue with you. "The pearl of great price—will you have it or not? Whether or not, there are millions sighing for it, crying for ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... deprive him of preliminary wrangle and objurgation was to send an armoured knight full tilt against a crashing lance without permitting him first to caracole around the list to the flourish of trumpets. But he scrambled up and fell upon his foe, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... 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 ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various

... the Demons now began to wrangle about the respective merits of their gourds, which, each assured the other, could imprison men and make them obey their wishes. Finally, Sun succeeded in putting one of the Demons ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... been discovered. It was found, we are told, in some fragments of skeletons dug up somewhere in Java. What an attraction this will be to lead scientific doctors to neglect living beings and wrangle over these old bones. In this country the real "Missing Link" is that charity on the part of the white people that recognizes the colored man as a fellow-citizen and a fellow Christian. Let that link be ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 4, April, 1895 • Various

... 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 ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... element as the rumsellers themselves," declared the General—"men of that type! I'm speaking now of the interests of true reform—reform that gets to the individual and is something else than this everlasting wrangle and racket between factions. I like fighting, but I like to have a natural fighter admit he's in it just for the sake of fighting—not claim it's ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... a trial by cold, starvation, and death, fit to stand for awesomeness beside Greely's later sorrowful story. From the very outset evil fortune had attended the "Jeannette." Planning to winter on Wrangle Land—then thought to be a continent—DeLong caught in the ice-pack, was carried past its northern end, thus proving it to be an island, indeed, but making the discovery at heavy cost. Winter in the pack was attended with severe hardships and grave perils. Under ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... Chamberleyn brought a writ before the Common Bench against a certain W., who, he complained, had taken his horse in the highway in the town of Bernewell. The writ ran—"took in the highway and still keeps impounded." There was the usual wrangle between counsel, and an attempt was made to oust or invalidate the writ by asserting that six years and a half before it (the writ) was purchased the animal had been surrendered. After this preliminary fencing counsel for the ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... her temper, which, always violent, had now become soured by adversity. She had no indulgence left for others. Dissatisfied with her friends, her children, and everything about her, she was disposed to wrangle and ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... age of the latter! The mother declared her daughter was forty-five; the daughter said: "Not a day over thirty-five," and intimated that she surely might be supposed to know her own age! The mother, however, murmured provokingly: "Moi, je sais mieux que ca"; and so the wrangle went on, until I made a diversion by taking leave of my hostess and promising to be present at the lecture the "following afternoon," which, by the way, had become "this afternoon" by the time ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... Maryland-bred horses, he had wonderfully clean, flat legs: after the hardest day's work, I never saw a puff on them; he was not sulky or savage, but had a temper and will of his own; both of these, however, yielded, after a sharp wrangle or two, to the combined influence of coaxing and a pair of sharp English rowels: in the latter days of our acquaintance we never had a difference of opinion. Considering the scarcity of staunch horse-flesh, the price asked was very moderate, and I closed the bargain on ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... nor is it divided into Romanists and Protestants, nor into theologians and rationalists, nor into Tories and Radicals, nor into any other of our familiar party divisions. The true division is into great men and small, lovers of truth and sophists, honest men and thieves. Thieves and sophists wrangle, but the great and true "join hands through the centuries," and between them is ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... right. We must see. After all we should be very stupid if we were over-scrupulous, for it's a matter of life and death to us. Let me do it. I'll see Macquart to-morrow, and ascertain if we can come to an understanding with him. You would only wrangle and spoil all. Good-night; sleep well, my poor dear. Our troubles will ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... of prices and plenty of work, we might probably come out a little ahead the next six months; but it wouldn't pay for the trouble and the capital invested. Then when trade slackened, we should be running at a loss, and there'd be another wrangle over a reduction. We ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... 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 Promised Land • Mary Antin

... of the clubs met in the town-house under the presidentship of Gravia Ogilvy, who was no better than a poacher, and was troubled in his mind because writers called Pope a poet, there was frequently a wrangle over the question, "Is literature necessarily immoral?" It was a fighting club, and on Friday nights the few respectable, God-fearing members dandered to the town-house, as if merely curious to have another ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... upstairs to his room, leaving the others, most of whom had been drinking somewhat freely, to wrangle about his proceedings. It ended in two of them going ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs

... 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 abatement ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... got any shining armour," sighed the witch, who had been looking a little puzzled. "But I had the hell of a wrangle with a Boche witch who came over. We fought till we fell off our broomsticks, and then she quoted the Daily Mail at me, and then she fell through a hole and broke her back over ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... them wrangle humorously over their agricultural deficiencies, and drifted off into open-eyed dreaming. Into his picture he began to fit these two speculatively, with a purely tentative adjustment of their personalities to his requirements. ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... the heavens fall! She could not ask the man to marry her, but it came to the same thing; she had practically committed that unpardonable sin; she had approached love to wedlock, a mystery to a bargain, the rapt converse of souls in heaven to a wrangle over the heeltaps in a tavern parlour. She was a heretic whom any Court of Love must excommunicate. The thing was so serious that it brought Cino to his feet, severe, formal, an Assessor of Civil Causes. He spread out his hands as ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... matter what the regime, the traditions of mediocrity and wretchedness long since adopted by my family. The law pleased me but little. I thought that the Code had been purposely maldirected in order to furnish certain people with an opportunity to wrangle, to the utmost limit, over the smallest words; even today it seems to me that a phrase clearly worded can not ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans

... indifference, and muttering that he would not have allowed himself to be betrayed into giving up such a prize so cheaply had it not been that he had an especial regard for the imperator Sergius Vanno, and that the house of Porthenus had never nourished mere traders to wrangle and chaffer over ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

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

... preserve, if not his reason, at any rate his moral equilibrium in the position which he had contrived for himself. To tell him this had been my object in seeking the interview, and the blessed opportunity only came after an hour's hard wrangle—in current metaphor after an hour's artillery preparation for attack. He looked so battered, poor old Anthony, that I felt almost ashamed of the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... 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.

... waist. On the fall of a mutineer, a rush would be 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, rifled the body, and, returning in great glee to where ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... from the East one morning, The wood's gay garments looked draggled out. You hear a sound, and your heart takes warning - The birds are planning their winter route. They wheel and settle and scold and wrangle, Their tempers are ruffled, their voices loud; Then whirr—and away in a feathered tangle, To fade in the south ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... morning, while he past the dim-lit woods, Himself beheld three spirits mad with joy Come dashing down on a tall wayside flower, That shook beneath them, as the thistle shakes When three gray linnets wrangle for the seed: And still at evenings on before his horse The flickering fairy-circle wheeled and broke Flying, and linked again, and wheeled and broke Flying, for all the land was full of life. And when at last ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... themselves had a difference on 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 ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... Marnold dubbed Armide an oeuvre batarde; John F. Runciman called Parsifal "decrepit stuff," while Ernest Newman assures us that it is "marvellous"; Pierre Lalo and Philip Hale disagree on the subject of Debussy's La Mer while W. J. Henderson and James Huneker wrangle over ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... chanced to pass A Public House, from which, alas! The Arms of Oxford dangle! My ear was startled by a din, That made me tremble in my skin, A dreadful hubbub from within, Of voices in a wrangle...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... If we do wrangle, what shall we get by it? Trouble and wrong ourselves, make sport to others. If I be convict of an error, I will yield, I will amend. Si quid bonis moribus, si quid veritati dissentaneum, in sacris vel humanis literis a me dictum sit, id nec dictum esto. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... significance even in their day. We read on with a good-natured pity, akin to the feeling which the gods of Epicurus might be supposed to experience when they looked down upon foolish mortals,—and when we shut the book, go out into our own world to fret, fume, and wrangle over things equally transitory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... brought up face to face with a Something Else that we see must underlie all these varying forms, shapes and manifestations. And that Something Else, we call Reality, because it is Real, Permanent, Enduring. And although men may differ, dispute, wrangle, and quarrel about this Reality, still there is one point upon which they must agree, and that is that Reality is One—that underlying all forms and manifestations there must be a One Reality from which all things flow. ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... question of Reform and of the extension of the franchise had been revived. Gladstone might speak in favour of the principle in 1864; Russell might introduce a Reform Bill in 1866; a year later Disraeli might 'dish the Whigs'; and Whig and Tory might wrangle over the question who were the friends of the 'working man', but Bright had made his position clear to his friends in 1846. He began a popular movement in 1849 and for the next fifteen years of his life it was the object dearest ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... lady yesterday; to-day a widow bearing only an immortal name. Among the neighbors of the late President, who came from afar to pay respect to his remains, was one old gentleman who left Richmond on Sunday. I had been upon the boat with him and heard him in hot wrangle with some officers who advised the summary execution of all rebel leaders. This the old man opposed, when the feeling against him became so intense that he was compelled to retire. He counselled mercy, good faith, and forgiveness. To-day, the men who had called him a traitor, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... nobility, 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. de Max has made ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... Shelley, because, according to him, their productions were "characterised by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety," and who, according to Carlyle, wasted their breath in a fierce wrangle with the devil, and had not the courage to fairly face ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... 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 lost temper on ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and air. The lilies of the mire are not so white as the white herons that fish among them. The ripest spray of goldenrod is not so highly coloured as the burnished gold on the breast of the oriole that rocks on it. The jays are bluer than the calamus bed they wrangle above with throaty chatter. The finches are a finer purple than the ironwort. For every clump of foxfire flaming in the Limberlost, there is a cardinal glowing redder on a bush above it. These may not be more numerous than other birds, but their brilliant colouring ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter

... Honeyman ran in the remuda, and we caught the best horses in our mounts, on which to pay our respects to Dodge. Forrest detailed Rod Wheat to wrangle the horses, for we intended to take Honeyman with us. As it was only about six miles over to the Saw Log, Quince advised that they graze along Duck Creek until after dinner, and then graze over to ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... a relative or an 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 ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... worm they dragged out was not devoured; 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 of half a dozen kinds were also there, and one tinkle-tinkled his spring song quite merrily ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... itself, and whether it is legitimate to do as Whitman did, to prolong the rhythmic phrase at the expense of metre, until the sense is completed,—all this was a problem for the professors and the critics to decide, and they might wrangle as they pleased. But here was Walt Whitman, recognizing no beauty higher than creative nature, recognizing no law greater than the spontaneous dictates of the moral personality; here was Walt Whitman, a pagan, a pantheist, who recognized ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various

... inflict legal penalties upon the heterodox, but have not yet learned those amenities which lend so sweet and gentle a dignity to debate. In looking over the dusty pamphlets which entomb so many clerical controversies of our Colonial times, it has often seemed as though we had lighted on some bar-room wrangle, translated out of its original billingsgate into scholarly classical quotations and wofully wrested tests of Holy Writ. This illusion seems all the more probable when we remember that the potations which inspired the loose jester and the ministerial pamphleteer of that period ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... supper and 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

... the thoroughfares meet at an angle Of ninety degrees (this angle is right), You may hear the loafers that jest and wrangle Through the sun-lit day and the lamp-lit night; Though day be dreary and night be wet, You will find a ceaseless concourse met; Their laughter resounds and their Fife tongues jangle, And now and again their Fife ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray

... the judgment of the society as to what conduct and character should be selected for preservation or caused to cease. In all modern states the power to make acts crimes has been abused, and the motive of punishment has been so lost that we wrangle as to what it is. The ruling coterie uses the power to make things crimes to serve its own interests. Protectionists make it criminal to import goods. Governments do the same to further their fiscal purposes. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... 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," ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... order 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 in itself is wholly indifferent, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

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

... sea-breeze, deflected by the ravines to a norther, was blowing; and in these regions, as in the sub-frigid zones of Europe, wind makes all the difference of temperature. During the evening we were visited by the Ma'azah Bedawin of a neighbouring encampment: they began to notice stolen camels and to wrangle over past times—another ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... 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 to decry idleness and the crimes of the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... prophesy what sort of a man each boy will be. One urchin shall hereafter be a doctor, and administer pills and potions, and stalk gravely through life, perfumed with assaf[oe]tida. Another shall wrangle at the bar, and fight his way to wealth and honors, and in his declining age, shall be a worshipful member of his Majesty's council. A third—and he is the Master's favorite—shall be a worthy successor to the old Puritan ministers, now in their graves; he shall preach ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne



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



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