What's the difference between persuade and wheedle?

Persuade


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To influence or gain over by argument, advice, entreaty, expostulation, etc.; to draw or incline to a determination by presenting sufficient motives.
  • (v. t.) To try to influence.
  • (v. t.) To convince by argument, or by reasons offered or suggested from reflection, etc.; to cause to believe.
  • (v. t.) To inculcate by argument or expostulation; to advise; to recommend.
  • (v. i.) To use persuasion; to plead; to prevail by persuasion.
  • (n.) Persuasion.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Gordon Brown believes that the fact of the G20 summit has persuaded many tax havens, such as Switzerland and Liechtenstein, to indicate that they will adopt a more open approach.
  • (2) An official from Cafcass, the children and family court advisory service, tried to persuade the child in several interviews, but eventually the official told the court that further persuasion was inappropriate and essentially abusive.
  • (3) She kept it up for three years, until her son's letters finally persuaded her to cut down to one day a week.
  • (4) We simply do whatever nature needs and will work with anyone that wants to help wildlife.” His views might come as a surprise to some of the RSPB’s 1.1 million members, who would have been persuaded by its original pledge “to discourage the wanton destruction of birds”; they would equally have been a surprise to the RSPB’s detractors in the shooting world.
  • (5) That refusal seems to have persuaded Apple's team, which has been core to the development of WebKit since using it for the Safari browser, released in January 2003, to introduce WebKit2 earlier this year which did offer that capability.
  • (6) It seeks to acquaint them with 'ethical' arguments against their work which, because they are simple and plausible, persuade many people.
  • (7) Obama will meet with Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas tomorrow as well, but US envoy George Mitchell has had no luck in recent weeks trying to persuade Netanyahu to compromise on the settlements.
  • (8) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (9) The writer John Lanchester concedes that democracies will always need spies, but reading the Snowden documents persuaded him that piecing together habits of thought from internet searches takes things far beyond conventional spying: “Google doesn’t just know you’re gay before you tell your mum; it knows you’re gay before you do.
  • (10) But Richard Hall, director of infrastructure at Consumer Futures, a consumer watchdog, said Ofgem had "produced a lot of evidence that would persuade a third party that there is a trend [of rising prices]".
  • (11) McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate with an influential voice on US foreign affairs, is seen by the Obama administration as a potentially important intermediary in its intensive push to persuade Congress to swing behind the plan for airstrikes .
  • (12) According to Deborah Mattinson, his pollster, Brown " loved slogans and believed them to be imbued with a mystical power capable of persuading the most intransigent voter", and therefore went a bundle on them – not least " A future fair for all ", the surreal dud with which Labour went to the country in 2010, following 2005's equally idiotic " forward not back ".
  • (13) For a while North Korea refused to play, but after delicate negotiations the players were persuaded back on to the pitch and the correct flag was displayed alongside the team photos.
  • (14) When the owners of Manchester City finally managed to persuade Pep Guardiola to oversee the next stage of their masterplan it is fair to say they probably did not expect to be approaching Christmas scuffling with a team of Watford’s limitations for their first league win at home in almost three months.
  • (15) He has some suggestions for what might be done, including easing changing the planning laws to free up parts of the green belt, financial incentives to persuade local authorities to build, and the replacement of the council tax and stamp duty land tax with a new local property tax with automatic annual revaluations.
  • (16) Even if nobody switched party, the general election result would look very different to what’s predicted if millennials could be persuaded to vote at the same rate as pensioners, as polls factor in turnout differences and oversample the elderly accordingly.
  • (17) For some people, free cash will persuade them to take the plunge.
  • (18) The fact that the leave campaign are getting things as straightforward as this wrong should call into judgment the bigger argument about leaving the EU.” He said out campaigners were trying to persuade people to vote for Brexit solely on the back of an issue “that is not true”.
  • (19) We had already persuaded him to give us a little extra time, telling him we would both pay him on a particular day, but when that day rolled around, neither of us had the money.
  • (20) Nonetheless, the NSA persuaded Erwin Griswold, the former dean of Harvard law school, the then solicitor general of the United States, to knowingly lie to the United States supreme court that it was still a secret.

Wheedle


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To entice by soft words; to cajole; to flatter; to coax.
  • (v. t.) To grain, or get away, by flattery.
  • (v. i.) To flatter; to coax; to cajole.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Still, there's an upside to 007's monogamy, and it may just explain how this much-maligned film has wheedled its way so irrevocably into my affections: uniquely in the world of Bond, it allows a vein of romantic adventure to develop that's real, not illusory.
  • (2) Pleading, shouting, wheedling, cajoling: none made any difference whatsoever.
  • (3) At the risk of being a complete bore …” he wheedles to John Reid, then the health secretary.
  • (4) Bird, convinced he wanted to be a writer and performer, had been quietly wheedling his school to teach drama at A-level.
  • (5) Netanyahu should be wooed and wheedled, coaxed and cajoled.
  • (6) He is terribly afraid of seeming self-satisfied, and is trying to wheedle out of the photographer a promise that he won't make him look pleased with himself.
  • (7) Labour and Tory alike may wheedle, protest and whinge.
  • (8) In a cable dated August 2004 titled "Alleged North Korean involvement in missile assembly and underground facility construction in Burma", one of the embassy staff wheedled information from an officer during a visit to Rangoon .
  • (9) It has heard wheedling from France's prime minister: "We will do everything to get [the triple A] back."
  • (10) The fact that he privately bombarded ministers with wheedling letters, contrary to his constitutional position, was an open secret but the government fought to keep the details under wraps.
  • (11) He's nuts – he should be wheedling with me; all a photographer can work with is a gallery of expressions, and after 37 years of no success at all, I don't think he has the facial musculature for smug.
  • (12) He wheedled a few things out of me - that was part of the fun.
  • (13) Kadyrov's response was characteristically wheedling.
  • (14) In one respect, America’s aeronautical myth has to wheedle its way around a flagrant contradiction: Air Force One carries the commander-in-chief, but he is not in command of the plane.
  • (15) Parker, meanwhile, had wheedled $50,000 from investors, and the pair moved to California.
  • (16) On stage, it had added significantly to his air of menace and deceit; he was treating the beaming Mrs W with wheedling charm while another side of his face was twitching with twisted insincerity.
  • (17) We felt that Lego forfeited its responsibility to children by allowing Shell to wheedle its way into playtime and normalise its brand for the next generation.
  • (18) That intervention was almost certainly the result of wheedling by the FA, who seem so much more comfortable with this sort of provenly ineffectual princery than with being held democratically to account.
  • (19) Now, they get their celebrity fix from gossip mags, such as Heat and Reveal, which pull celebrities apart like a gaggle of playground bullies, wheedling out their secrets and laughing at their fashion fails, while for aspirational lifestyle, fashion, and serious features, they will buy Elle, Grazia or Instyle – magazines that appear to respect their emotional maturity and purchasing power.
  • (20) In an attempt to wheedle a confession from the lonely Stagg, she said he would win her heart only if he would admit to sharing her love of Satanism and child murder.