Lawn Wanglers

August 25th, 2004 · No Comments

Night before last, I watched Barry Nolan, prodigal son of Boston news, recently returned from his stints on Hard Copy and Extra!, deliver an editorial on CN8, the inherently strange cable channel run by the cable provider, about the Swift Boat flap. He quoted an unidentified writer with the following passage from a memoir:

I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed … managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units …. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.

Now, when he read the quote, printed on the screen for our convenience, he pronounced “wangle” with an “r,” as “wrangle.” Now, I suppose their meanings are not that far apart, but I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t been using a made-up word all along, and that perhaps Barry Nolan was correcting me. After looking into it (hooray for free OED through work), I discovered that “wangle” is indeed a word, of unknown origins, that was first recorded in 1888 as printer’s slang. Today, it means

To accomplish (something) in an irregular way by scheming or contrivance; to bring about or obtain by indirect or insidious means (something not obtainable openly); to manipulate, fake (an account, report, prices).”

I love the OED’s note on it: “Probably, like many other slang words, it was formed involuntarily, under the influence of an obscure sense of phonetic symbolism; the suggestion may have come from WAGGLE v.]”

So, Barry Nolan’s mispronunciation was just that, and the author, one General Colin Powell (apparently somehow not speaking about his boss), used it correctly (though those whose page I link to manage to spell it “wrangle” as they try to quote him). It’s much closer to “finagle,” as Aimee pointed out, than “wrangle”; “Wangle a Bagel” just doesn’t sound right. “AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard” still sounds right, though.

Tags: Noted