Other forms: dimples
A dimple is a small hollow that appears in a cheek when you smile. A deep dimple, dimples when she laughs, a chin dimple.
It is caused by a muscle under the skin being shorter or split, so it pulls the skin in when the face moves. It runs in families. A golf ball's dimples are the same word and do a different job: they cut drag and make the ball fly further.
1noundimpleA small hollow that appears in a cheek when you smile.
“He has his mother's dimples and his father's blue eyes.”
dimple is a hollow.
Old English dympel meant a pit or depression, from a Germanic root.
Old English
*dympel
Middle English
dimpel
English, today
dimple
From Middle English dimpel, from Old English dympel. From Middle English dimpel,dimpil,dympull, from Old English dympel (“pit, depression”), from Proto-West Germanic dumpil, from Proto-Germanic dumpilaz (“sink-hole, dimple”), from Proto-Germanic dumpaz (“hole, hollow, pit”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰewb- (“deep, hollow”), equivalent to dialectal dump + -le. Cognate with German Low German Dümpel, German Tümpel (“pond, pool”). Related also to Old English dyppan (“to dip”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA