Bryan Garner's Usage Tip: wrangle; wangle.

Your daily usage tip hot off the press.

Smarter words.
(From the new 5th edition of Garner's Modern English Usage.)

wrangle; wangle.

wrangle; wangle. The two are occasionally confounded. Wrangle = to argue noisily or angrily. Wangle = (1) v.t., to accomplish or obtain in a clever way; (2) v.t., to manage (a thing) despite difficulties; or (3) v.i., to use indirect methods to accomplish some end. E.g.:

“He has aptly demonstrated his advertising acumen by wrangling [read wangling] almost half a million dollars in free print media from New York Magazine.” Letter of David Curry, New York, 23 Jan. 1989, at 9.
“So, in 1990, he called the Detroit Lions and wrangled [read wangled] an invitation to camp.” David Wharton, “Climbing Charts Again,” L.A. Times, 9 Aug. 1997, at C10.
“I start calling everyone I know to try and wrangle [read wangle] a job at a newspaper, trade magazine, nonprofit, anywhere that will let me write.” Eilene Zimmerman, Smacked 17 (2020).

This confusion was all but unknown before the mid-1950s, but it has become common since 2000.

LANGUAGE-CHANGE INDEX

wrangle misused for wangle: Stage 4

Current ratio in print (wangle an invitation

vs. *wrangle an invitation): 1:1.02

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