Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) to use dishonest or devious methods to bring something about; to fiddle; to ‘wangle’, to scheme, to get (something) by trickery; also as n.

1926		L.C. Wimberly ‘Amer. Political Cant’ in AS II:3 139: The corruptionist has to endure the reproach of ‘sculduggery,’ ‘pull,’ ‘loot,’ ‘rake-off’ [...] and ‘finagle’.
1933		‘Paul Cain’ Fast One (1936) 250: Turn her over to me in the open and without any finaygling.
1935		D. Lamson We Who Are About to Die 106: They do expect you [...] not to join in the petty conniving, grafting, fenagling, racketing, prison politics.
1937		D. Fuchs Low Company 20: See, I don’t stand for no phenagling around when I’m with a dame, that’s me.
1938		D. Runyon ‘Baseball Hattie’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 653: You must both be daffy to think of such a thing as phenagling around with a baseball game.
1942		W. Winchell 3 May [synd. col.] WE will never forgive him for stealing $5.50 (the ticket fanagled) from the Navy Relief Society.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 169: It took managing, finagling . . . and time.
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 711: They find him a sweet young thing thats around handy to relieve himself on and they finagle and finagle till they got him married to her.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 11: The Sicilian conspiracy to master the underworld, with its finagling, killing, torturing and treachery, is history.
1965		J. Thompson Texas by the Tail (1994) 7: He’d goofed off a week’s careful finagling.
1975		L. Rosten Dear ‘Herm’ 152: Mr. K gives her his open-skull smile, and finagels ‘Miss Macintosh this job is in no peril.’.
1985		O. Hawkins Chili 18: I finagled my way into her telephone number.
1993		R. Firestone Swing, Swing, Swing 108: Kickbacks were as common in the music business of 1934 as they were during the highly publicized payola scandals of the 1950s, so this sort of under-the-table finageling [sic] wouldn’t have been anything especially unusual.
1997		Share Slanguage.
2001		J. Stahl Plainclothes Naked (2002) 58: The idea was to tell Zank about the money between Carmella’s tits, then finagle Tony into going for it himself.
2019		V.D. Hanson Case for Trump 80: [H]is advisors had hinted that such blustering was ‘art of the deal’ finagling .
2020		(con. 1991-94) W. Boyle City of Margins 22: Giuseppe tries to talk, tries to finagle his way out of the trouble he’s in.

2. to ask questions.

1933

‘Paul Cain’ ‘One, Two, Three’ in Penzler Pulp Fiction (2006) 7: I finagled around for a half hour and talked to the sheriff and the clerk.

3. to fiddle, to manipulate.

1932

‘Paul Cain’ ‘Black’ in Omnibus (2006) 218: I finagled with the ltach for a while and then pushed the gate open slowly.

4. (also feniggle) to associate with (for hedonistic purposes).

c.1935		‘Joe Louis the Pride of Harlem’ [comic strip] in B. Adelman Tijuana Bibles (1997) 122: Joe, I don’t approve of you fenigglin’ around wid dese Harlem gals.
1953		E. Wilson Look Who’s Abroad Now 11: In Denmark, where there are so many beautiful blond women [...] there are about as many finagling husbands as you would find anywhere else.
1962		S. Longstreet Flesh Peddlers (1964) 157: I souldn’t finagle with alcohol and sweets.
1974		E. Wilson Show Business Laid Bare 195: Older actors admit their phenagling and tried to justify it. ‘A love affair within the cast is like a convenience when you’re on tour,’one man said.