[f. next.]
1. An angry dispute or noisy quarrel; an altercation or bitter disputation.
1547. Latimer, in Foxe, A. & M. (1563), 1350/2. Or els he had neuer come into this wrangle for his own goods with your brother.
1611. Cotgr., Noise, a brabble,… wrangle, squabble.
1673. Essex Papers (Camden), I. 92. [This] animated all those persons who were mutinous & discontented … to raise wrangles & cavills at what ever I did.
1732. Swift, Consid. two Bills, Wks. 1841, II. 225/1. An infinite number of wrangles and litigious suits in the spiritual courts.
1779. G. Keate, Sketches fr. Nat. (ed. 2), II. 72. When discord agitated the assembly of the gods, and their wrangles had made a bear-garden of Olympus.
1787. T. Jefferson, Writ. (1859), II. 335. The complicated wrangles of this continent.
1839. T. Mitchell, Frogs of Aristoph., p. cvi. Preferring the songs of Colonean nightingales to the wrangles of the stage.
1859. Holland, Gold Foil, xxiv. 279. The disgraceful wrangles of the religious newspapers.
1874. Green, Short Hist., iv. § 2 (1882), 171. Each … had to be extorted after a long wrangle between the borough and the officers.
attrib. 1602. Parsons, Warn-word to Sir F. Hastings, 22. The late arriual of O. E., his Wrangle-word. Ibid., 26 b. This pedling marchant comming later to the faire with his wrangle-word.
transf. 1866. G. A. Lawrence, Sans Merci, II. 235. There are days when for ten minutes or so he [the horse] will jump only on compulsion; but he has to deal with sharp spurs and hands of iron; and he has never once got much the best of a wrangle.
† 2. a. A disputatious answer or argument. b. A controversy. Obs.
1579. W. Wilkinson, Confut. Fam. Love, 21 b. To the fourme of wordes he hath formed a wrangle, the matter he graunteth belike to be true.
1752. Law, Spirit of Love, I. (1766), 1. Your Objections rather tend to stir up the Powers of Love, than the Wrangle of a rational Debate.
3. Without article: The action of wrangling; angry altercation or argument; noisy dispute or contention.
a. 1797. H. Walpole, Mem. Geo. III. (1845), III. iii. 81. From this dialogue the assembly fell to wrangle, and broke up quarrelling.
1824. Byron, Juan, XV. xci. None can hate So much as I do any kind of wrangle.
1834. Lady Granville, Lett. (1894), II. 159. They are just well and ill enough together to turn the stream of wrangle into a new channel.
1877. Talmage, Serm., 255. The Book of Job has been the subject of unbounded theological wrangle.
