How to Use finagle in a Sentence

finagle

verb
  • A con man finagled my neighbor out of four hundred dollars.
  • Over at the hotel, Pip and Ravi do some finagling (a fire alarm is involved) to steal the inn’s guest book from April 2019.
    Fletcher Peters, Vulture, 1 Aug. 2024
  • The slingback style is easy to put on in the mornings since there are no buttons or clasps to finagle with.
    Michelle Rostamian, Peoplemag, 22 Apr. 2024
  • He's forced to mix and match a crew of relievers to finagle his way through nine innings.
    Dana Gauruder, Detroit Free Press, 11 July 2021
  • People schemed, finagled, wheedled, and conspired, caught up in the mad, headlong rush of the city.
    Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker, 27 Nov. 2023
  • And how to finagle the maximum use of storage and hanging space in the small bathroom.
    Dana McMahan, The Courier-Journal, 3 May 2018
  • As for the settings on your camera, there are a number of things to finagle for Milky Way photos.
    Meredith Carey, Condé Nast Traveler, 9 Dec. 2019
  • The Bulls managed to finagle a first-round pick for Mirotic anyway.
    David Haugh, chicagotribune.com, 1 Feb. 2018
  • Is Mara trying to finagle her own after-hours one-on-one date?
    Kristen Baldwin, EW.com, 15 Feb. 2022
  • The Browns, meanwhile, have won two games in a row and are trying to finagle their way back into the playoff picture.
    Dan Labbe, cleveland, 22 Nov. 2019
  • That way, the league could finagle the schedule for each team to get its natural bye, and the Sundays off going into and out of TNF.
    Albert Breer, SI.com, 22 Feb. 2018
  • The brothers were left all the money when their father died, leaving Regina to finagle her own way to wealth.
    Toby Zinman, Philly.com, 17 May 2017
  • Ramona shows Destiny how to finagle her way around the Wall Street clientele who frequent their strip club.
    Los Angeles Times, 5 Mar. 2021
  • Ramona shows Destiny how to finagle her way around the Wall Street clientele who frequent their strip club.
    Ed Stockly, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2021
  • Ramona shows Destiny how to finagle her way around the Wall Street clientele who frequent their strip club.
    Ed Stockly, Los Angeles Times, 9 Apr. 2021
  • Ramona shows Destiny how to finagle her way around the Wall Street clientele who frequent their strip club.
    Los Angeles Times, 26 Feb. 2021
  • This will be the 10th one he’s erected at the ballpark, not including a bust of Gov. Jim Thompson who finagled the public money to build it.
    Jon Greenberg, The Athletic, 25 Jan. 2025
  • The buttons also tend to be larger and easier to finagle with gloves on.
    Mike Richard, Men's Health, 6 May 2022
  • The killer snake finagled its way into a chicken coop in Kerala, India, killed a chicken and then tried to eat eight of the eggs laying around the henhouse.
    Fox News, 13 Apr. 2018
  • The attachments took a little finagling to secure, and the mixer does not feature a button to release them.
    Michelle Rostamian, Peoplemag, 20 Mar. 2023
  • At 16, Schneider was an aspiring actor and decided to skip school to try to finagle his way onto the set of the hit movie.
    Sasha Savitsky, Fox News, 7 Sep. 2018
  • Amid the drama, though, Colton finagles Becca into giving him the rose.
    Rebecca Farley, refinery29.com, 3 July 2018
  • There are ways to finagle eggs at dinner if lunch isn’t possible.
    Carol Deptolla, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 20 Feb. 2018
  • Darla tries to finagle a set up for Senna with lawyer Adam (Tony Goldwyn), but the two polar opposites get off on the wrong foot.
    Katie Walsh, latimes.com, 29 Mar. 2018
  • Others have been dreading it—and would happily finagle a deal with the universe to skip to some other day four years down the road instead.
    Angela Haupt, TIME, 17 Jan. 2025
  • Should government make the choice for us by finagling subsidies to favor produce and poultry over meat and dairy?
    Boston Herald Editorial Staff, Boston Herald, 8 May 2024
  • The lawsuit would drag on for years before a judge ruled, in 2022, that Lynch had indeed finagled the true value of Autonomy.
    airmail.news, 19 Aug. 2024
  • Before long, the siblings finagle their father a job as the Parks' chauffeur, and their mom manages to get hired as housekeeper.
    Patrick Brzeski, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Nov. 2019
  • The president of the United States couldn’t even finagle an invite to the coveted fashion event.
    Shalwah Evans, Essence, 25 Apr. 2020
  • In theory, however, there’s more to lose on this earthly plane, provided the show can find a way to finagle it.
    Karen Han, Vox, 19 Oct. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'finagle.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: