A squiggle is a short, wiggly line that curves and twists without following any particular pattern. When you doodle absentmindedly during class, those random curvy marks on the edge of your paper are squiggles. A squiggle looks like what happens when a worm tries to draw a line, or when you move a pen across paper while your hand is shaking.

You'll see squiggles everywhere once you start noticing them: in the way a garden hose lies coiled on the ground, in the path a caterpillar makes across a sidewalk, or in how your little sister scribbles before she learns to write letters. Artists sometimes use squiggly lines to show movement or energy in their drawings. Cartoonists often draw squiggly lines above a character's head to show confusion, or around something to show it's vibrating.

The word can also be a verb. When something squiggles across a surface, it moves in that characteristic wiggling, twisting way. A tadpole squiggles through pond water, and earthworms squiggle through soil.