Squiggle

//ˈskwɪɡl̩// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A short twisting or wiggling line or mark.

    "Even the cold ashes where a gipsy's fire had been sent little squiggles of fear down Laura's spine, for how could she know that they were not still lurking near with designs upon her own person?"

  2. 2
    an illegible scrawl wordnet
  3. 3
    Synonym of tilde. informal
  4. 4
    a short twisting line wordnet
  5. 5
    An illegible scrawl.
Verb
  1. 1
    To wriggle or squirm. ambitransitive

    "When I was coming of age in the '60s, I squirmed and squiggled not to be pinned down by that great transfixer "the homosexual" which American psychiatry had made into such a weighty implement."

  2. 2
    To make a squiggle. ambitransitive
  3. 3
    To write illegibly. ambitransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
curlicuescrabblescrawlscribblescribblesquirm

Antonyms

All antonyms
line

Example

More examples

"That's a squiggle, not legible handwriting."

Etymology

Probably a blend of squirm + wiggle.

More for "squiggle"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.