Finagle
verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 To obtain, arrange, or achieve by indirect, complicated and/or intensive efforts. transitive
"finagle a day off work"
- 2 achieve something by means of trickery or devious methods wordnet
- 3 To obtain, arrange, or achieve by deceitful methods, by trickery. transitive
"finagled his way out of a ticket by pretending to be on the way to a funeral, distraught"
- 4 To cheat or swindle; to use crafty, deceitful methods. (often with "out of" preceding the object) ambitransitive
"shady stockbrokers who finagle their clients out of fortunes."
Example
More examples"She finagled her way around so that her arms were now clasped around his neck. So as not to cause a scene, Jason began to sway with her as if they had intended to dance. “Where's your counterpart tonight, Mandy?” he asked with a sly smile. “I thought you and Carl Maycomb were seeing each other.” Mandy answered with a “humph,” indicating she didn't want to talk about Carl."
Etymology
Americanism from the 1920s, perhaps combining an alteration of fainaigue (“to renege”) with the suffix + -le (“frequentative”), possibly influenced by inveigle; compare haggle.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.