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Wrangle   /rˈæŋgəl/   Listen
Wrangle

verb
(past & past part. wrangled; pres. part. wrangling)
1.
To quarrel noisily, angrily or disruptively.  Synonym: brawl.
2.
Herd and care for.



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"Wrangle" Quotes from Famous Books



... the problem in our modern society which is most difficult of solution; that it is the ground upon which earnest and zealous men unhappily too often, and in too many countries meet, not to co-operate but to wrangle; while the poor and the ignorant multitudes around them are starving and perishing for lack of knowledge. Well, then, how has Upper Canada addressed herself to the execution of this great work? How has she sought to solve this problem—to overcome this difficulty? ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... have 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

... 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 ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... named, a wrangle may be set down as one of the certainties. But Harvey Bradley had defied the fury of half a hundred men, and he meant to teach this marplot his proper place. There was a threatening gleam in his eye, but he puffed a few seconds at his pipe, and then, glaring through the rank smoke ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... you gave 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, if done ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... 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 ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... proselytizing nun in 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 and St. Louis ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... 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

... turned into robes of flowing white, and her face became bright with exceeding beauty, and there was a glory around it, so that she shed a light on the water like the moon in its brightness. And she said, 'Ogg, the son of Beorl, thou art blessed in that thou didst not question and wrangle with the heart's need, but wast smitten with pity, and didst straightway relieve the same. And from henceforth whoso steps into thy boat shall be in no peril from the storm; and whenever it puts forth to ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... at least, of its objects, efforts, and expectations little is known, save the abortive mission of Messrs. Stevens, Hunter, and Campbell to Fortress Monroe in the last months of the struggle, and about this there has recently been an unseemly wrangle. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... Nor law, nor cavalcade of Holborn, 435 Could render half a grain less stubborn. For he at any time would hang For th' opportunity t' harangue; And rather on a gibbet dangle, Than miss his dear delight, to wrangle; 440 In which his parts were so accomplisht, That, right or wrong, he ne'er was non-plusht; But still his tongue ran on, the less Of weight it bore, with greater ease; And with its everlasting clack 445 Set all men's ears upon the rack. No sooner cou'd a hint appear, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... canal-boats, and East Indiamen; in shops, counting-rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, alehouses; on the exchange, in the tennis court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a kettle half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, the Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... 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 that ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... 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 if, because ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... declares himself, on oath, guiltless of the death of any man for religion's sake, ii. 16; he returns to France from the Council of Trent, and unsuccessfully seeks the approval of the decrees, ii. 154; his wrangle at Melun, Feb, 1564, with Chancellor L'Hospital, ii. 154, 155; his encounter with Marshal Montmorency in Paris, ii. 166; forbidden by Catharine to hold communication with Granvelle and Chantonnay, ii. 181; he disregards the prohibition, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... concerns himself with the mechanism; and it is also true that the more one is filled with the spirit of song the less he concerns himself with the construction of the vocal instrument. People with little or no musicianship have been known to wrangle ceaselessly on whether or not the thyroid cartilage should tip forward on high tones. It is such crude mechanics masquerading under the name of science that has brought voice training into general disrepute. The voice ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger

... keep an eye on his precious box. It seemed an eternity before he could get anywhere near the ticket-office window, and he completely lost what little temper he had when a garrulous woman blocked his way and took fifteen minutes of additional time in an interminable wrangle over change. ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... 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

... 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

... makes a family when all the sisters and brothers stand together, and what an awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling about a father's will and making the surrogate's office horrible with their wrangle. Better when you were little children in the nursery that with your playhouse mallets you had accidentally killed each other fighting across your cradle, than that, having come to the age of maturity, and having in your veins and arteries the blood of the same father and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... country shall secure an adequate and permanent advantage. When the great heart of England is stirred by quick cupidity to profitable crime, far be it from us to lift our palms in deprecation. In the wrangle for existence nations, equally with individuals, work by diverse means to a common end—the spoiling of the weak; and when by whatever of outrage we have pushed a feeble competitor to the wall, in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... 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.

... would not need to be educated. But by addressing them from their tenderest years in a language they cannot understand, you accustom them to be satisfied with words, to find fault with whatever is said to them, to think themselves as wise as their teachers, to wrangle and rebel. And what we mean they shall do from reasonable motives we are forced to obtain from them by adding the motive of avarice, or of fear, or ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... them from raving. Of what consequence is it whether you do or do not say that the king is the head of the Church? From His heavens above, God looks down and smiles at this petty earthly strife which concerns not Him, but men only. Let scholars and theologians wrangle; we women have nothing to do with it. If we only believe in God, and bear Him to our hearts, the form in which we do it is a matter of indifference. But in this case the question is not about God, but merely about external dogmas. Why should you trouble yourself ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... spat twice, thrice. Then rose a snapping, snarling wrangle. Off there in the gloom ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... to find himself. With his wife he was overbearing; with his 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

... to the guillotine, but she will never understand her own times. She has dignity; we have not a scrap; we have forgotten what it was like; we go into a passion at the amount of our bills; we play and never pay; we smoke and we wrangle; we laugh loud, much too loud; we inspire nothing unless, now and then, a bad war or a disastrous speculation; we live ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... to whirl on her, shake her out of the cowardly refuge of sleep, and resume the wrangle that had ended ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... long ago Did learn to suck and sip and taste; But now grown sickly, sad, and slow, Doth fret and wrangle, pine ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... in cases that are brought into court, where it is the purpose to get something from our neighbor and to force him out of his own. As (to give examples), when people quarrel and wrangle about a large inheritance, real estate, etc., they avail themselves of, and resort to, whatever has the appearance of right, so dressing and adorning everything that the law must favor their side, and they keep the ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther

... 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 ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various

... himself. For, not having store enough in his own land to recruit his forces—so heavy was the blow he had received—he went to Britain, calling himself an ambassador. Upon his outward voyage, for sheer wantonness, he got his crew together to play dice, and when a wrangle arose from the throwing of the cubes, he taught them to wind it up with a fatal affray. And so, by means of this peaceful sport, he spread the spirit of strife through the whole ship, and the jest gave ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... spoke for Guy, and Amy rejoiced; for if her sister had not taken up the defence of the absent, she must, and she felt too strongly to be willing to speak. It seemed too absurd for one feeling himself under such a doom to wrangle about a horse, yet she was somewhat amused by the conviction that if Guy had really wished to annoy Philip ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "This wrangle," sighed Mr. Perkins, "is both unseemly and sordid. Let us all agree to abide by dear Uncle ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

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

... flying 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

... are 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 ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... the outer 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. ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... enough space for a man to look forward to in anything else than a dream. War, it is true, may intervene, or some other terrible catastrophe; but we shall not admit this into our hypothesis, which proceeds on the assumption, that although people may wrangle here and there, and here and there fly at each other's throats, still the bulk of civilised mankind will go on tranquilly enough to present no direct barrier to the advancing tide. Here is a list of a few trifles ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various

... 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 ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... Arising, spake; and, by the Gods, he said, Ye more resemble children inexpert In war, than disciplined and prudent men. Where now are all your promises and vows, 410 Councils, libations, right-hand covenants?[14] Burn them, since all our occupation here Is to debate and wrangle, whereof end Or fruit though long we wait, shall none be found. But, Sovereign, be not thou appall'd. Be firm. 415 Relax not aught of thine accustomed sway, But set the battle forth as thou art wont. And if there be a Grecian, here and there, One,[15] adverse to the general voice, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... expectations would have been realized, but the governor would not be bothered with any extra work whilst the heat spell lasted, and he had been warned that the "Holy Office" would claim the Englishmen as heretics and blasphemers. This would mean a lengthy wrangle between the military and ecclesiastical authorities, and his sun-dried excellency was not in the mood or condition to preside over heated arguments. The fellows were safe, he said, and would have time to think over their sins, political ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... charge of a panderer do not wrangle so many times, or gladiators in charge of a trainer do not fight so many times for a prize as these do under their teacher of philosophy. The populace, not self-restrained and serious, but fickle, barbarous, pugnacious, is wonderfully tickled with all this as ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... in the light, He ventures forth along the edge of night; With silent foot he scouts the coulie's rim And scents the carrion awaiting him. His savage eyeballs lurid with a flare Seen but in unfed beasts which leave their lair To wrangle with their fellows for a meal Of bones ill-covered. Sets he forth to steal, To search and snarl and forage hungrily; A worthless prairie vagabond is he. Luckless the settler's heifer which astray Falls to his fangs and violence a prey; Useless her ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... desired to be read between the lines by a class which loved to think its own separate thoughts, and express its own separate feelings in its own diction, sometimes in its own jargon. He hunted for epigrams, and too often sparkled rather than burned. He was afraid not to be witty, to wrangle, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... "Flacius was not a heretic, but in the wrangle of his day he was branded as such, and this has been frequently repeated." (4, 2, 495.) A similar verdict is passed by Gieseler and other historians. But whatever may be said in extenuation of his ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... 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, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... is a manifest fact, upon which a direct simple issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether a measure of Government be right or wrong is no matter of fact, but a mere affair of opinion, on which men may, as they do, dispute and wrangle without end. But whether the individual thinks the measure right or wrong is a point at still a greater distance from the reach of all human decision. It is therefore very convenient to politicians not to put the judgment of their conduct ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

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

... result was announced, we expressed our entire disapprobation; and yet trusting to the representations of the government that matters were concluded satisfactorily, we had to decide whether it were wise, if the great result was obtained, to wrangle upon points however important, such as those to ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... led to a sharp answer from Hal. Helen replied again, and a hot wrangle went on across the ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler

... Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili impatiently, "I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and the will in Pierre's favor are among the count's papers, then, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... times. Then the prima donna leaped on to the first line, and slipped, and fell on to the second, and that broke and let her through into the third. The other voices came in to pick her up, and got into a grand wrangle, and the bass and the soprano had it for about ten seconds; but the soprano beat (women always do), and the bass rolled down into the cellar, and the soprano went up into the garret, but the latter kept on squalling as though the bass, in leaving her, had wickedly torn out all her back ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... palm-oil, which renders the skin smooth and supple, but leaves a peculiar aroma; they are mostly cross enough till they have thoroughly shaken off sleep, and the morning generally begins with scolding the slaves or a family wrangle. I have seen something of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... 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 sentence of justice with newly ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... scratch and scold, And boys will fight and wrangle, And big, grown men, just now and then, Fret o'er some fingle-fangle, Vexing the earth with grief or mirth, Longing, rejoicing, rueing— But by the sliprails stands our ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... pool-dotted moor that stretches inland to the very horizon afford any relief to such feelings. So you turn away in search of rest and shelter. Then but a comparatively few downward steps and you find that the tempestuous wind has ceased to wrangle with you; already you are beneath the shadow of the great rock. Descending further, the bleak aspect of Nature is transformed. The heather gives place to dwarf shrubs; the bare, weather-beaten rocks ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare

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

... 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 ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... on the wrangle all the way by water; the girl insisted upon her knowing that I was her mother, and told her all the history of my life in the Pall Mall, as well after her being turned away as before, and of my marriage since; and which was worse, not only who my present husband was, but ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... for kisses play'd; Shee would keepe stakes, I was content; But when I wonn she would be pay'd, This made me aske her what she ment; Nay, since I see (quoth she), you wrangle in vaine, Take your owne kisses, give ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... boys working together in a field, having stopped to wrangle and fight, one of them suddenly stood still remembering something, and said a strange thing ...
— The Land of the Blue Flower • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... 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 ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... incendiary, hysterical utterances. All workingmen were to be called out on a general strike; every man that had a trade was to take part in a "death struggle." But Sommers could see the signs of a speedy collapse. In a few days the strong would master the situation; then would follow a wrangle in the courts, and the fatal "black list" would appear. The revenge of the railroads would ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... they, indeed, that when, as I stood there, the various time-pieces announced the hour of ten, the war of opinions that followed was calculated to unsettle the firmest convictions. The observations of an Ingersoll which stood near me were particularly startling. The effect of an actual wrangle was the greater from the fact that all these individual clocks were surmounted by effigies of the authors of the ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... 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 thee to-night; and to-morrow we will ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... 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 into ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... a baby or a doll," went on Margaret, passionately. "If I'm old enough to marry I'm old enough to talk. I can think, can't I? You never told me anything, but I could see. Ever since I can remember you and father have had one continual wrangle about money—bills—expenses. Perhaps I'd have been better off without all the advantages and luxury. It's because of these things you want to throw me at some man. I'd far rather go to work the same as Blaid did, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... The southerly heights, when I came here, were black with people, fishers waiting on wind and night. Now all the S.Y.S. (Stornoway boats) have beaten out of the bay, and the Wick men stay indoors or wrangle on the quays with dissatisfied fish-curers, knee-high in brine, mud, and herring refuse. The day when the boats put out to go home to the Hebrides, the girl here told me there was "a black wind"; and on going out, I found the epithet as justifiable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... repudiated many of those habits of respect and courtesy which belonged to their former condition, and asserted their own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed to be their right as republican citizens. Life became a sort of domestic wrangle and struggle between the employers, who secretly confessed their weakness, but endeavored openly to assume the air and bearing of authority, and the employed, who knew their power and insisted on their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Mifflin, '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 ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... I was on it before you, and I'm not going any more shares with you and your mates," Walker shouted; and the men on the claims nearest caught the words, and withdrew their attention from the wrangle between Palmer Billy and the jumper of his ground, in favour of the squabble between the four discoverers of ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... 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? ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould. . . . The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour causes ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... and common citizens may wrangle till doomsday about the ethics of this debacle. They will never get anybody to understand it. The thing is an economic outlaw like its author. Mackenzie as a common storekeeper would have been sold for taxes. As a railway ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... 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 defence ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... shocking in a clergyman. It is chiefly German historians who complain of Charles as being priest-ridden, and also of neglecting the affairs of the Empire while concentrating too much on Bohemia. This is a matter for historians to wrangle about; personally I consider that by his Golden Bull, which very much restricted the power of the Popes to interfere with the election of Kings of the Germans, and in the protection he extended to priests accused of heresy for their ardour ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... rising, "to search the garden and adjoining meadows; if you two gentlemen choose to come with me, I shall of course be happy of your company; if, however, you prefer remaining here to wrangle, you can do so." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... 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 to prorogue them for three weeks, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... the Mahrattas had failed to give, with the fort, the five villages according to agreement. The Council were desirous of having Toolajee in their own keeping, so they refused to give over Gheriah, and for some months a wrangle went on concerning the points in dispute. The Council proposed that they should retain Gheriah and give up Bankote. The Peishwa taunted the Council with breach of faith, and refused to give up Toolajee. The squabble was at last settled by the Mahrattas ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... he hath done thee? Words Are edgeless weapons: live we blest or curst, No jot the more of evil or good engirds The life with bitterest curses compassed round Or girt about with blessing. Hinds and herds Wage threats and brawl and wrangle: wind and sound Suffice their souls for vengeance: we require Deeds, and till place for these and time be found Silence. What bids thee bid ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Marcian, with a shrug of the shoulders. The natural tune of his voice harmonised with his visage, and he spoke as one who feels a scornful impatience with the affairs of men. 'At Rome, they wrangle about goats' wool, as is their wont. Anything else? Why, yes; the freedman Chrysanthus glories in an ex-consulate. It cost him the trifle of thirty pounds ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... said the visitor tenderly extending his hand to Lorand, "that that old wrangle which happened ten years ago has long been forgotten by you—as it has ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... dearth of water set in, that all Israel might know that only owing to the merits of the pious prophetess had they been spared a lack of water during the forty years of the march. [602] While Moses and Aaron were now plunged in deep grief for their sister's death, a mob of the people collected to wrangle with them on account of the dearth of water. Moses, seeing the multitudes of people approaching from the distance, said to his brother Aaron: "What may all these multitudes desire?" The other replied: "Are ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... thoroughly 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 ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... no use arguing with 'em; they will have their own way; but they are very trusty and honest, poor things. We soon found that out. When we came here first it was in a hired wagon, and Hottentot drivers: so when we came to settle I made ready for a bit of a wrangle. But my maid Sophy, that is nurse now, and a great despiser of heathens, she says, 'Don't you trouble; them nasty ignorant blacks never charges more than their due.' 'I forgive 'em,' says I; 'I wish all white folk was as nice.' ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

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

... 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 ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... Troy—bandy-legged, lame of one foot, with his 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 at the son ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... original 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 by calling him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray

... 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 a ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... of the expedition, the less said the better; the Government instructions were vacillating and contradictory; Babbage was slow and apathetic, Warburton pompous and arbitrary; and in the end the affair was further degraded by an old-womanish wrangle between the two explorers as to the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... the speakership of the House, and the equally orthodox wrangle over contested seats, the State Assembly had settled down to routine business, despatching it with such unheard-of celerity as to win columns of approval from the State press as a whole; though there were not ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... infinite must form the best, Where all must full or not coherent be, And all that rises, rise in due degree; Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain, There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man: And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) Is only this, if God has placed ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... a gradely chap like me, A lass can live mooast happily; An awl let all awr neighbors see We'll live withaat a wrangle; For if two fowk just have a mind To be to one another kind, They each may be as easy twined As th' ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... was a considerable wrangle between the old woman and the young girl, but all in good time Susy won her desire, and Mrs. Church made the ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... 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 ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... were occupied in settling the claims of contestants to seats. The anti-Benton delegates from Missouri were admitted, and the New York wrangle was finally settled by adopting the minority report of the Committee on Credentials, which admitted both the "Hards" and the "Softs," giving each half a vote. On the first ballot, Buchanan had one hundred and thirty-five votes, Pierce one hundred and twenty-three, Douglas thirty-three, and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... more than men equally famous in their day. It was this "invisible power" behind his ideal which triumphed over all opposition at last, and which continues to triumph in spite of the pigmy-souled crowd of party politicians who still wrangle in the political arena. Nothing lasting is ever accomplished without "vision," and the spiritual, though long in coming, will yet triumph over ignorance and prejudice and selfishness, even though it comes through war ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... 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 by ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... George Desmond's time-yellowed 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

... dared tell you such perfectly ridiculous things? What is the meaning of this wrangle in Pinewood Hall? I am amazed—perfectly amazed—that a girl under my charge should express herself so cruelly and rudely, as well as in so nonsensical ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe

... Deacons would have had a wrangle over each and every word of that notice. That was why they never saw it till ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... 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, saw him ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... once she caught herself wishing that some one would mention her name. Nobody did in those excited days, and Betty had no means of learning whether her sudden good health had been final or temporary. Sally Carter did not allude to her again. When she and Betty met, it was to wrangle on the Cuban question, for Miss Carter ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... part, by the fact that not until the 1st of February, 1860, 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 Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... up or downward, and let politicians wrangle, Let the parsons and philosophers grope in a wordy tangle, Let those who want them scramble for their dignities or dollars, Be millionnaires or ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... They who attempt to out-wrangle a quarrelsome neighbour, go the wrong way to work. A kind word, and still more a kind deed, will be more likely to be successful. Two children wanted to pass by a savage dog: the one took a stick in his hand and pointed ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... a garret, and who has never known the society nor the language of a gentleman; or it is assumed by a young graduate, just settled in his chambers, and flushed with the triumph of his degree of 'B.A.', whose 'fond conceyte' [to borrow Master Francis Thynne's[87] terse style,] is, to wrangle for an asses shadowe, or to seke a knott in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... 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 boy by ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... woke full of hope and eager to be off. Chryseros brought our wallets and we packed them with everything they were to hold except most of the food. We had a long wrangle over the money, as Chryseros wanted to force on us more silver than I thought it ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... placing raillery in railing, Will tell aloud your greatest failing; Nor make a scruple to expose Your bandy leg, or crooked nose; Can at her morning tea run o'er The scandal of the day before; Improving hourly in her skill, To cheat and wrangle at quadrille. In choosing lace, a critic nice, Knows to a groat the lowest price; Can in her female clubs dispute, What linen best the silk will suit, What colours each complexion match, And where with art to place a patch. If chance ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... 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. I have taken the champagne for granted, and ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... A wrangle is the disinclination of two boarders to each other that meet together but are not in ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock



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



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