Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK Und.) to cheat, to confuse; thus wheedling n. and adj.

1640		R. Brathwaite Ar’t Asleepe, Husband? 95: [A] brave Blade, who being in Company of a bevy of joviall Wenches, who had whitteld him well with liquor.
1664		S. Butler Hudibras Pt II canto 3 line 335: His business was to pump and wheedle.
1674		Jackson’s Recantation in C. Hindley Old Book Collector’s Misc. 15: The poor cully was [...] wheedled into play.
1689		R. L’Estrange Erasmus Colloquies 126: These Hoarson Jack-puddings, how they Coakes, and Wheadle the little people!
1696		Dialogue Between Two Young Ladies Lately Married 15: For her modest Commendations of him, which you call Wheedling, ’tis no unsuccessful Method.
1709		N. Ward Secret Hist. of Clubs 303: How to file a Drunken Cully; Sweeten an Old Letcher; Whedle a constant Customer [...] and how to pass at once a Sham-Saint and a Maidenhead upon a loose Quaker.
1727		J. Gay Beggar’s Opera I i: ’Tis Woman that seduces all Mankind, / By her we first were taught the wheedling Arts: / Her very eyes can cheat; when most she’s kind, / She tricks us of our Money with our Hearts.
1732		Harlot’s Progress 18: It is to Cheat, Delude, and Wheedle, / All but the Constable and Beadle.
1755		D. Bradstreet Life and Uncommon Adventures 202: Are you the Hussy that has wheedled my Brother out of two thousand Pounds a Year, for going to Bed to you?
c.1780		‘They all Do It’ in Holloway & Black (1975) I 261: Some call out, will you wheedle away.
1803		‘C. Caustic’ Petition Against Tractorising Trumpery 49: A spruce young patent-monger Contrives to wheedle simple ninnies.
1830		Lytton Paul Clifford I 68: Taradididdle, don’t think for to wheedle me with your debts and your honour.
1837		N. Hawthorne Amer. Notebooks (1932) 7: She would wheedle and laugh, and blarney, beginning in rage, and ending as if she had been in jest.
1840		Flash Mirror 5: Flash Doings. The Art of Bouncing, Cadging, Wheedling, and Gammoning, Laid Open.
1853		T. Haliburton Sam Slick’s Wise Saws ol. I 225: It ain’t no difficult thing or anybody to wheedle him.
1855		Macaulay Hist. of England IV Ch. 18 🌐 He wheedled Tillotson out of some money.
1866		J. Greenwood Little Ragamuffin 19: She wheedles me and my innocent wife.
1877		J. Greenwood Dick Temple III 175: The wheedling scoundrel.
1892		H. Nisbet Bushranger’s Sweetheart 137: A man who could wheedle a sixpence almost out of a parson’s own private funds.
2010		L. Redhead Thrill City [ebook] I briefly considered trying to wheedle Jenny’s number out of her mum, but she seemed like a pretty switched-on old cookie, so I decided not to push it.