{"id":6318,"date":"2011-12-01T17:02:38","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T17:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=6318"},"modified":"2011-12-01T17:02:38","modified_gmt":"2011-12-01T17:02:38","slug":"striggles-sniggles-and-squiggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=6318","title":{"rendered":"Striggles, sniggles and squiggles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I came across the word <strong>striggle<\/strong> \/\u02c8str\u026ag(\u0259)l\/ &#8211; a wavy line, while looking for something else in the <a href=\"http:\/\/oed.com\/view\/Entry\/191619\">OED<\/a>. It&#8217;s a portmanteau of straggle and wiggle, and it caught my attention because I hadn&#8217;t encountered it before, and because it appeals to me.<\/p>\n<p>Other words that look and sound like they&#8217;re related include <strong>squiggle<\/strong> (to work wavy or intricate embroidery, to squirm or wriggle, squirm); <strong>sniggle<\/strong> (to wriggle, crawl, creep stealthily; a snigger or snicker), and <strong>wriggle<\/strong> (to twist or turn the body about with short writhing movements; to move sinuously; to writhe, squirm, wiggle). The etymology of these is uncertain and they are perhaps of imitative origin, though apparently wriggle comes from the (Middle) Low German <em>wriggeln<\/em>, which comes from <em>wriggen<\/em> (to twist or turn).<\/p>\n<p>Does the <strong>-iggle<\/strong> part of these words suggest anything to you in terms of size, shape, or other qualities?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came across the word striggle \/\u02c8str\u026ag(\u0259)l\/ &#8211; a wavy line, while looking for something else in the OED. It&#8217;s a portmanteau of straggle and wiggle, and it caught my attention because I hadn&#8217;t encountered it before, and because it appeals to me. Other words that look and sound like they&#8217;re related include squiggle (to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}