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Is the usage of the word 'inveigle' correct in the following sentence?
What is far murkier however, is the extent to which the Russian State has managed to inveigle its tentacles into British politics and society.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the word means:
How are these meanings consistent with the construction of that sentence?
The base meaning ofinveigle is to trick or craftily induce someone to do something good for you and/or bad for that person. As has been said, this can perhaps be stretched into inveigle ones way into someone’s trust.
But my reaction to the inveigling of tentacles is that this is not yet accepted usage. As has already been said, that does not prevent us from understanding what is being said. But the understand is tinged with a sense of weirdness: the use sounds (and is) inept.
There is an obvious verb to use. What nasty creatures like cephalopods do with their long sinuous tentacles is to insinuate them.
