Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

crinkle

UK/ˈkɹɪŋkəl/US/ˈkɹɪŋkəl/
verbB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,826 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: crinkled, crinkles, crinkling

To crinkle is to form small folds and wrinkles. Eyes crinkled, crinkled paper, crinkle at the edges.

Eyes crinkling at the corners is the mark of a genuine smile — the muscle involved is hard to move on purpose, which is why a false smile misses it. Of paper and foil it means fine irregular folds. Note that the word comes from an Old English verb meaning to yield or bend.

Definitions of crinkle

  1. 1verbcrinkleTo form small folds and wrinkles.B2+

    “Her nose crinkled in disgust when she smelt the mouldy cheese.”

crinkle is a wrinkling.

Where it comes from

Middle English crenclen comes from Old English crincan, to yield or bend. Cringe and crank come from the same bending.

  1. Old English

    *crinclian

  2. Middle English

    crenclen — to bend, buckle

  3. English, today

    crinkle

From Middle English crenclen (“to bend, buckle”), from Old English crinclian, frequentative form of Old English crincan (“to yield”), from Proto-Germanic kringaną (“to turn, to fall, to yield”), from Proto-Indo-European ger- (“to turn, wind”). Cognate with frr krenge, krönge (“to obtain, reach, attain”), Dutch krinkelen (“to turn, wind”). Related to cringe.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

crinkle in the wild

  • A mandoline (US, ) or mandolin, is a culinary utensil used for slicing and for cutting juliennes; with suitable attachments, it can make crinkle-cuts.

    Mandoline

  • The name reflects the fell's physical appearance as its summit ridge is a series of five rises and depressions (crinkles) that are very distinctive from the valley floor.

    Crinkle Crags

  • The crinkle-collared manucode is found throughout lowlands and hill forests in mainland New Guinea and Misool Island of West Papua.

    Crinkle-collared manucode

  • Widespread and a common species throughout its habitat range, the crinkle-collared manucode is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

    Crinkle-collared manucode

  • The TCV hairpin 5 (H5) is an RNA element found in the turnip crinkle virus.

    Turnip crinkle virus (TCV) repressor of minus strand synthesis H5

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.