Other forms: puckering, puckered, puckers
To pucker is to draw into small tight folds. Pucker your lips, the fabric puckered, a puckered seam.
Of a face it means drawing the lips or brow together — puckering up before a kiss, a puckered brow. Of cloth it means gathering into unwanted wrinkles, which is a fault in sewing caused by the wrong tension. Of skin it is what water does to fingers after a long bath. Note puckered; and that the word's origin is genuinely uncertain.
1verbpuckerTo draw into small tight folds.
“The fabric puckered where she had pulled the thread too tight.”
pucker is a gathering into folds.
The origin is unknown, possibly related to poke, a bag — the same image as purse, which also means to draw into folds.
Middle English
pukkeren — to hoard, save
English, today
pucker
Built from
Origin unknown. Perhaps continuing Middle English pukkeren (“to hoard, save”) literally “to sack, stow away in a poke or bag” with a change in meaning (compare purse (“to pucker”)). Alternatively, perhaps a direct alteration of poke (verb, or the noun meaning "a small bag"). by surface analysis, poke + -er.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA