wrangle
verb · noun
Simple meaning
To convince or influence by arguing or contending.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
rangguhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɹæŋɡəl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
transitive
To convince or influence (someone) by arguing or contending.
transitiveWestern US
To herd (horses or other livestock).
Herd and care for
To quarrel noisily, angrily or disruptively
“The bar keeper threw them out, but they continued to wrangle on down the street.”
transitivefiguratively
To gather and organize (data, facts, information, etc.), especially in a way which requires sentience rather than automated methods alone, as in data wrangling.
intransitive
To make harsh noises as if quarrelling.
noun
countable
An angry dispute; a noisy quarrel; an altercation.
uncountable
Angry disputation; noisy quarrelling.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To convince or influence (someone) by arguing or contending.
Used this way, wrangle is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use wrangle
- “The bar keeper threw them out, but they continued to wrangle on down the street.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Someone who argues noisily or angrily.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A cowboy who takes care of the saddle horses.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.