dangle
English
Etymology
Perhaps of Scandinavian origin, akin to Danish dingle.
Pronunciation
Verb
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- (intransitive) To hang loosely with the ability to swing.
- Hudibras
- He'd rather on a gibbet dangle / Than miss his dear delight, to wrangle.
- Tennyson
- From her lifted hand / Dangled a length of ribbon.
- 2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36:
- Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between. For every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth.
- His feet would dangle in the water.
- Hudibras
- (intransitive, slang, ice hockey, lacrosse) The action of performing a move or deke with the puck in order to get past a defender or goalie; perhaps because of the resemblance to dangling the puck on a string.
- He dangled around three players and the goalie to score.
- (transitive) To hang or trail something loosely.
- I like to sit on the edge and dangle my feet in the water.
- (intransitive, dated) To trail or follow around.
- 1833, Miller's Modern Acting Drama
- To dangle at the elbow of a wench who can't make up her mind to accept the common title of wife, till she has been courted a certain number of weeks — so the old blinker, her father, says.
- 1833, Miller's Modern Acting Drama
Translations
hang loosely
|
hang or trail something loosely
|
Noun
dangle (plural dangles)
- An agent of one intelligence agency or group who pretends to be interested in defecting or turning to another intelligence agency or group.
- (slang, ice hockey, lacrosse) The action of dangling; a series of complex stick tricks and fakes in order to defeat the defender in style.
- That was a sick dangle for a great goal!
- A dangling ornament or decoration.
- 1941, Flora Thompson, Over to Candleford:
- So her father wrote to Mrs. Herring, and one day she arrived and turned out to be a little, lean old lady with a dark brown mole on one leathery cheek and wearing a black bonnet decorated with jet dangles, like tiny fishing rods.
Anagrams
Categories:
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/æŋɡəl
- English intransitive verbs
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with usage examples
- English slang
- en:Ice hockey
- en:Lacrosse
- English transitive verbs
- English dated terms
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns