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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



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

... shadow lurking 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 blatant calling when his teeth Are fast ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... two we wrangle and blunder about the earth, And that body we share we may not spare; but the Gods have need ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... 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

... it, of course, Red. Reef that jaw of yours now, lad, and clap on. Don't stand there like a Jew and wrangle over the loot. Want to stop and ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... meant to insist and she resented the deception he had practised in securing this loan without telling her, but the danger was so great that she could not afford to let her feelings blind her, nor to put the thing in a bad light by seeming to wrangle about it. She looked at him steadily, so steadily, in fact, that John was disconcerted. The work in hand gave excuse for withdrawing his eyes and Elizabeth watched him arrange the knot of the rope so that they could ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... an auspicious day, such record-breaking gate receipts, nor such sure promise of success. The game was called for half-past two. It was three o'clock now and the line-up had not been formed. Even the gentle wrangle over details and eligibility could hardly have spun out so much time as seemed to the waiting throng to be uselessly wasted now. Evidently, something was wrong. The crowd grew impatient and demanded the cause. Out in the open, the two squads were warming up for the fray, while the officials hung ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

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

... 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 shoes forgot the ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... least, must be true," ran his tumultuous thoughts. "For this Testament do both creeds revere that wrangle over the later." He had a Latin text, and first he turned to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and, reading it critically, he seemed to see that all these passages of prediction he had taken on trust as prognostications of a Redeemer ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

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

... been acting as umpire in an animated wrangle between Doyle and Major Kent, shambled across to the door of the hotel where Dr. O'Grady and ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... thief because he would not turn instantly and ride back to a smith-shop. And I have seen him sit over a blacksmith with his narrow face thrust up under the horse's belly, and put his finger on the place where every nail was to go in and the place where it was to come out, and growl and curse and wrangle, until, if I had been that smith, I should have ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... 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 ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

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

... 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 ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... most 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 the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... down on Menindie To run for the President's Cup — Oh! that's a sweet township — a shindy To them is board, lodging, and sup. Eye-openers they are, and their system Is never to suffer defeat; It's 'win, tie, or wrangle' — to best 'em You must lose 'em, or else it's ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... 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 ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... brook such a change of social relations; but, unable to cope against Roman power, they came, as usual, to wrangle among themselves. The majority pronounced for another chieftain, named Bogitar, and succeeded in forming a party in Rome in his favor. Clodius, in an assembly of the Roman people, obtained a decree confirmatory of his authority, and he took possession of Pessinuntum, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... September, 1623, Gorges arrived at Plymouth attended by an Episcopal minister, William Morell, and a company of settlers, whom he planted at Wessagusset. He remained in New England throughout the winter, and in the effort to exert his authority had a long wrangle with Weston. In the spring of 1624 he received news from his father that discouraged his further stay. It seems that in March, 1624, a committee of Parliament, at the head of which was Sir Edward Coke, had ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... concerning the "New Hampshire grants," affected the Highland settlers; but the more exciting events of the wrangle took place outside the limits of Washington county, and consequently the Highland settlement. This controversy, which was carried on with acrimonious and warlike contention, arose over New York's officials' claim to the possession of all the land north of the Massachusetts line lying west of the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

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

... ceases to be worthy the ambition of the 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 are decided by perjured votes or party considerations; and all ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... 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 ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne

... and face as clean-cut as if an old Greek cameo 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 or defend any one else. On one occasion ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... huts that formed early London were fought for over and over again, as wolves wrangle round a carcass. On Cornhill there probably dwelt petty kings who warred with the kings of Ludgate; and in Southwark there lurked or burrowed other chiefs who, perhaps by intrigue or force, struggled for centuries to get a foothold in Thames Street. But of such infusoria ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... be? Hark at that noise in the street below! People are crying out in a great rage. What can it be? It was so that day a week agone, when news was brought in that some poor settlers had been murdered by Indians, and the Assembly would do nothing but wrangle with the Governor instead of sending out troops to defend our people. Do you think something can ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... 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 ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... is pretended is universal. I cannot think the accusation true. Or, if it be, I am convinced it must be the result of some strange perversion of what may be called the natural propensities of man. I own I have seen children wrangle for and endeavour to purloin, or seize by force, each others apples and cherries; and this may be a beginning to future rapacity. But I know the obvious course of nature would be to correct, instead of to confirm, such mistakes. I know too that there are individual instances of cruelty, and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

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

... 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

... decent appearance of sober 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 ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... unfortunate that the much-debated question of the religious education of children is almost exclusively considered from the points of view of the sectarian and the secularist. In a discussion of this question we are almost certain to be invited to take part in an unedifying wrangle between Church and Chapel, between religion and secularism. That is the strange part of it, that it should seem impossible to get away from this sectarian dispute as to the abstract claims of varying religious bodies. The unfortunate part of it is that ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... children understood how to reason they 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

... applied by Southey to a class of writers headed by Byron and 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 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

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

... with splendid infatuation, proposed a return to the attack, with a change of tactics to concentration upon one side only of the Boodah; but the foreigners pointed out the obvious added dangers; and in the midst of a wrangle a dispatch-boat from the Solon, eleven miles south, arrived, demanding the usual sea- rent, by draft, if not in gold; so out, at this unlooked-for incident, broke a new quarrel, the British for a whole hour resisting the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... ha, ha, I never knew a Scene more nicely acted; to see two Lovers pet, and thwart, and wrangle, when they are just expiring for ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker

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

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

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

... The part assigned to Bacon in the prosecution was as important as that of Coke; and he played it more skilfully and effectively. Trials in those days were confused affairs, often passing into a mere wrangle between the judges, lawyers, and lookers-on, and the prisoner at the bar. It was so in this case. Coke is said to have blundered in his way of presenting the evidence, and to have been led away from the point into an altercation with ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... tired, and went to bed soon after, to sleep dreamlessly till daylight. He sprang from his bed, and after a plunge in the stream set about breakfast; while Edwards rose from his bunk, groaning and sighing, and went forth to wrangle the horses, rubbing his hands and shivering as he met the keen edge of the mountain wind. When he returned, breakfast was ready, and ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

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

... 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 ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

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

... 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 ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... 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 privileges. From this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... 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

... point they went on to a thoroughly embittering wrangle. Mr. Stanley used his authority, and commanded Ann Veronica to come home, to which, of course, she said she wouldn't; and then he warned her not to defy him, warned her very solemnly, and then commanded ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... ended as quickly as it began. The Sauk triumphed, as, judging from the size of the two, he was likely to do in such a wrangle. The hand of Deerfoot became nerveless and dropped to his side. He stood silent and sullen, as though he had no more interest ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... arrancar to write, escribir to write to each other, escribirse writer, escritor writing (n.), letra, escrito writing desk, escritorio writing pad, carpeta written agreement, contrato to wrangle with someone, haberselas con uno on the ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

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

... now he can almost 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 with great unction and effect, ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Confederate statesmanship; or 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

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

... apparent concessions only to keep 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 ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... went on; the gas was lit, the crowd in the galleries began to thin, but the contest continued; the crowd returned, by and by, with hunger and thirst appeased, and aggravated the hungry and thirsty House by looking contented and comfortable; but still the wrangle lost nothing of its bitterness. Recesses were moved plaintively by the opposition, and invariably voted ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... 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

... Wages of sin. Scorn of the seer, Vanity's grin, Darkness grown dear— Wages of sin. Trouble without, Canker within, Fear, hate, and doubt— Wages of sin. What is to be, All that has been, Shadows that flee— Wages of sin. Loss of the soul, Wrangle and din, Tragedy's dole— Wages of sin. Warning enough! (Mortals are kin) Ragged and rough ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... fell into a wrangle. It was not so easy to hang a man when such a woman stood there pleading for him. Besides, Bob Short insisted that hanging was arsony in the first degree, and they better not do it. To this Bill Day assented. He said he 'sposed tar and feathers was only ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... 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 ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... much benefit results from such discussion. The interest of the people is quickened, and opportunity is afforded for explaining, defending, and enforcing the truth as it is in Jesus. Sometimes the questioner is neither serious nor reasonable, and then the danger is of the discussion turning into a wrangle, which does more harm than good. Prominent transgressors in this line are the Pundas, specially interested in the mela, who do all in their power to set the people against us. At this first great gathering which I attended—I found it was the case afterwards on similar occasions—there ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

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

... stores 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 things for the female members of his household to wear—now ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... Yes, that's what wears on me—they wrangle about me as if I had no right to say what part I am to take. But it's all over, mother; unless grandfather holds me by the throat every mortal minute to-day I'm going into ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... Danaides? Since the rising of Bethlehem's star, in the cloudy sky of polytheism, what has human genius discovered of God, eternity, destiny? Metaphysicians build gorgeous cloud palaces, but the soul cannot dwell in their cold, misty atmosphere. Antiquarians wrangle and write; Egypt's moldering monuments are raked from their desert graves, and made the theme of scientific debate; but has all this learned disputation contributed one iota to clear the thorny way of strict morality? Put the Bible out of sight, and how ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... began, with Von Gerhard's amused eyes laughing down upon me. "I should say that you would be more in the Nirlanger style, in your large, immovable, Germansure way. Not that you would stoop to wrangle about money or gowns, but that you would control those things. Your wife will be a placid, blond, rather plump German Fraulein, of excellent family and no imagination. Men of your type always select negative ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... Master said, 'The superior man dislikes the thought of his name not being mentioned after his death.' CHAP. XX. The Master said, 'What the superior man seeks, is in himself. What the mean man seeks, is in others.' CHAP. XXI. The Master said, 'The superior man is dignified, but does not wrangle. He is sociable, but not a partizan.' CHAP. XXII. The Master said, 'The superior man does not promote a man simply on account of his words, nor does he put aside good words because ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge

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

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

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

... of a sea voyage, landing at Port Said is amusing. The steamer anchors in mid-stream, and is quickly surrounded by gaily painted shore boats, whose swarthy occupants—half native, half Levantine—clamber on board, and clamour and wrangle for the possession of your baggage. They are noisy fellows, but once your boatman is selected, landing at the little stages which lie in the harbour is quickly effected, and you and your belongings are safely deposited at the station, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... quantities in Seale, Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle, Depriv'd of many a wholesome meal, In barbarous Latin doomed to wrangle. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

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

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

... Chester "Pastores" are the two shepherd plays in the Towneley cycle.{16} The first begins with racy talk, leading to a wrangle between two of the shepherds about some imaginary sheep; then a third arrives and makes fun of them both; a feast follows, with much homely detail; they go to sleep and are awakened by the angelic message; after much debate over its ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... WRANGLE up your mouth-harps, drag your banjo out, Tune your old guitarra till she twangs right stout, For the snow is on the mountains and the wind is on the plain, But we'll cut the chimney's ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... principle, his will, That whatsoe'er it chanc'd to prove, Nor force of argument cou'd move; 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 ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... hero 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

... column devoted 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 ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

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

... lightly 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

... digress.... How on earth did any living man pull it off as well as that? I remember arguing with a man who very genuinely thought the talent of Shakespeare was exaggerated in public opinion, and discovering at the end of a long wrangle that he was not considering Shakespeare as a poet. But as a poet, then, how on earth ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... any lovers' quarrel after it's over?" he snarled, pacing the room angrily. "A silly wrangle over the size of the moon or the depth of a river, maybe—it might as well be, so far as its having any real significance compared to the years of misery that follow them! Never mind the quarrel! So far as I am concerned, I am willing to say there was ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... 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 ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... business," cried the priest, anxious to terminate the wrangle. "Dr. Marsh and I am here to discuss what is to be done with ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

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

... time," she said to Florent, when Lacaille had gone off with the carrots in his sack. "That old rogue runs things down all over the markets, and he often waits till the last peal of the bell before spending four sous in purchase. Oh, these Paris folk! They'll wrangle and argue for an hour to save half a sou, and then go off and empty their ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... 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 not the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob kind-hearted people and the descendants of ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

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

... are mocking me. You think I am not worthy to be fought, But I'll not wrangle but with ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats

... Fritz his share of the sparkling golden water. Fritz, who intended to keep it all to himself, proposed that they should put off sharing it till later. Franz would not hear of this. He knew, only too well, what Fritz intended. This led to a wrangle, which ended in a fight between the two, in which the sparkling golden water was spilled, partly over Fritz's right hand, and the remainder over Franz's left foot. The brothers first realized what had happened to them by Fritz finding that he could not close his fist to ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... So I wyll, but yet I must say true 140 And now a lyttle more I wyll say to you Much sorowe and care welth doth brewe He is seldome in rest. when a man is a lyttle hit and welthy And hath in his cheste treasures plentye Then wyl he wrangle, and do shreudly By his power and might. With his neighboures he wyll go to lawe And a wreke his malyce for valew of strawe welth is fykle and out nf awe 150 wylfull in wronge ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous

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

... "rat" to make the distance in a row boat within a few months!) An Argive captain returns home after an absence of ten years to find his wife interested overmuch in a friend who went not forth to battle; a wrangle ensues; the tender spouse finishes her lord with an axe—and you have the Agamemnon. (To-day we should merely have a sensational trial, and hysterical scareheads in the newspapers.) Such were the ancient stories that move us all—sordid enough, be sure, when ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

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

... in London, on my return from the Newmarket meetings, I have had nothing to note. The O'Connell and Raphael wrangle goes on, and will probably come before Parliament. It appears to make a greater sensation at Paris than here; there, however, all other sensations are absorbed in that which the Emperor of Russia's speech ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... Lake Merritt was proposed by Norman and seconded by Arthur and Olney. Martin was the only one capable of handling a boat, and he was pressed into service. Ruth sat near him in the stern, while the three young fellows lounged amidships, deep in a wordy wrangle ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

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

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

... greatness; to lift them on to a spiritual plane, that the greatness may not wane and become ineffective. There is the figure that stands before the world, about whose perfection or whose qualities you may wrangle if you will; he is great; he is wonderful; he stirs up love and animosity;—but behind him are the Depths, the Hierarchies, the Pantheons. Socrates' warning Voice, the Daimon that counseled him in every crisis, has always been a hard nut for critics to crack. He was an impostor, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... scale 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 had better ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... United Rates can't get up somethin' foxy fer her soldiers to wear. Had a war over here not long ago, I understand—somethin' like ten or fifteen years ago. Dere's another little country up north of Graustark, and dey got in a wrangle 'bout somethin', and dey tell me in Edelweiss dat for 'bout a year dey ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... full of smell of unmeasured miles of growing grain in summer, or ripening corn and wheat in autumn. When it comes in winter the air glitters with incredible brilliancy. The snow of the country dazzles and flames in the eyes; deep blue shadows everywhere stream like stains of ink. Sleigh bells wrangle from early morning till late at night, and every step is quick and alert. In the city, smoke dims its ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... which came near ending in a wrangle, Willem being opposed by his companions, it was decided that they should ride round in a circle of which the dwelling of the boer should be the centre. By so doing, the spoor of the lost animals should be found. It was the only ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... old wrangle!" said the lady, and smiled a little wistfully. "My dear and very honored lover, then; and I am come to ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... already—Your own love blinds you! Ha! I am a good man!—I don't drink, I don't swear, I am respectable, I don't blaspheme like Bletchley! Oh yes, and I am a scholar: I can cackle in Greek: I can wrangle about God's name: I know Latin and Hebrew and all the cursed little pedantries of my trade! But do you know what I am? Do you know what your husband is in the sight of God? He is ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... occurred in the course of a wrangle between the two, because Austin insisted on his pet cat—a plump, white, matronly creature he had christened 'Gioconda,' because (so he said) she always smiled so sweetly—sitting up at the dinner-table and being ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... natural, under the circumstances. Nevertheless, I would beg to insist that the proper course is to refer this quarrel to The Hague Tribunal, unless the President of the United States can be induced to act as arbitrator. More than likely he will settle the wrangle by paying the claim out of ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... of his mine men were hammering stakes into the ground on all sides of the discovery claim, and Clark and Johnson were in a loud wrangle as to who reached the spot first. Leading his mule up to the cliff wall where he had built a shelter, Bidwell unpacked his outfit, and as he stood his rifle against ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... quarters," Felix Brush hastened to say, and there would have been a general wrangle for the privilege of accommodating the little one, had not her father, seeing how matters were going, smilingly raised his ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

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

... that; if he did, perhaps I should not love him: But we sit and talk, and wrangle, and are friends; when we are together, we never hold our tongues; and then we have always a noise of fiddles at our heels; he hunts me merrily, as the hound does the hare; and either this is love, or ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... me, Master Lusam, that my son And your chaste daughter, whom we match'd together, Wrangle and fall at odds, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... the words—that if Wilfrid came to Countess Lena of his own free-will, unprompted, to beg her forgiveness, he would help to reinstate him, when Wilfrid's name was brought up by the chasseur. All had laughed, "Even I," Lena confessed. And then the couple had a pleasant petitish wrangle;—he was requested to avow that he had came solely, or principally, to beg forgiveness of her, who had such heaps to forgive. No; on his honour, he had come for the purpose previously stated, and on the spur of his hearing that she was Countess Alessandra Ammiani's deadly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... then. You 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

... pen with which he had been lettering his books on the table, and, drawing a chair up to the fire, he sat moodily staring into the embers. So it was all to begin again—the long wrangle and jar of their childhood. Why had he broken silence and taken this burden once more upon his shoulders? He had a moment of passionate regret. It seemed to him more than he could bear. No gratitude, no kindness; and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a leaf but the seaweed's tangle, Never a bird's but the seamew's note, It heard all round it the strong storms wrangle, Watched far past it the waste wrecks float. But her soul was stilled by the sky's endurance, And her heart made glad with the sea's content; And her faith waxed more in the sun's assurance For the winds ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

... 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 place to quarrelling, which engendered bloody combat. Also, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... Hard words and a wrangle followed, but Smith did not change expression, and there was a backdown. "Have you fellows let Du Sang get away while you were playing fool ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... day's work before six. A heavy thunderstorm in the night had made everything fresh and shining, but at the same time the water on the underbrush soaked Wilbur through and through when he went out to wrangle the horses. Merritt's riding horse, a fine bay with a blazed face, had a bad reputation in the country, which Wilbur had heard, and he was in an ugly frame of mind when the boy found him. But Wilbur was not afraid of horses, and he soon ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... Knavery takes in vice her sly degrees, As slip, away, not guilty, from the bar, Counsel, or client, as their Honors please. To breathe, in crowded courts, a pois'nous breath— To plead for life—to justify a death— To wrangle, jar, to twist, to twirl, to toil,— This is the lawyer's ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... did not know what to do to save herself; then all at once the memory of some old violent wrangle came to her aid, and springing forward she blew out the candle and softly retreated to a corner of the room, where she remained ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... from this, which occasion not only great damage to his Majesty's service, but also a great delay in the settlement of the present business, on account of this vicious understanding being the cause of their trying to direct it by unsuitable and senseless methods, and to wrangle and dispute not only with the Portuguese, but even among themselves in regard to obtaining certain other things, it seems to me that the present negotiations would move more briskly and advantageously if they should do the very contrary of what ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... Master Stewart, 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, ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... 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

... After preliminary organization a wrangle at once began as to the form of the trial. We held very strongly that we should continue our usual custom of open meeting; but Morton insisted with equal vehemence that the prisoners should have jury trial. The discussion ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... Musa, the king at Kaze, who had shown himself friendly on a previous expedition, I underwent some trying experiences in trying to mediate between two rival rulers, Snay and Manua Sera, between whom there was continual wrangle and conflict. On one occasion Musa, who was suffering from a sharp illness, to prove to me that he was bent on leaving Kaze the same time as myself, began eating what he called his training pills—small dried buds of roses with alternate bits ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... Gulching, thoroughly cross and worried, is doing the housework with one hand and dangling a fractious teething baby from the other. The rest of the family are engaged in playing games of skill and chance (on the win, tie, or wrangle principle), in the middle of the street outside; and piercing screams testify to the fact that John William Gulching, aged two, had just been uprooted by Mary Kate Gulching, who wants to lay out a new Hop-Scotch court, from the flagstone upon which ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... 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 it, dying for it. To the poor at any rate the Gospel ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... 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 is fast ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various



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



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