Other forms: crumpled, crumpling, crumples
To crumple is to crush something into folds and creases. A sheet of paper closed inside a fist.
It works on paper, fabric and metal, and it works both ways round, so you crumple a letter and a letter crumples. Car design has the crumple zone, which is engineered to collapse in a crash and absorb the energy before it reaches the people, and it is one of the great safety inventions. There is a use about people too, since somebody crumpling means collapsing, physically or emotionally.
Middle English
crumplen
English, today
crumple
From Middle English crumplen, cromplen, frequentative of Middle English crumpen (“to curl up, crump”), from Old English crump (“bent, crooked”). Equivalent to crump + -le.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 28 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word