Word.ws English Dictionary

cringle

cringle noun: a short piece of rope, arranged as a grommet around a metal ring, used to attach tackle to a sail etc.

cringle: a short piece of rope, arranged as a grommet around a metal ring, used to attach tackle to a sail...
Image: btr, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

cringle (plural cringles)

  1. A short piece of rope, arranged as a grommet around a metal ring, used to attach tackle to a sail etc.
    • "Lower till that rope-loop […] till the cringle was down on the boom. Then I'd tie her up the way you said, and then I'd hoist up the peak and throat halyards again."1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous
  2. A withe for fastening a gate.

Verb

cringle (third-person singular simple present cringles, present participle cringling, simple past and past participle cringled)

  1. (transitive) To fasten or attach with a cringle.

Forms of cringle

Noun
pluralcringles
alternative formcrengle
alternative formcrenkle
Verb
third-person singular presentcringles
present participlecringling
past participlecringled
pastcringled

Questions about cringle

What does cringle mean?
Cringle means a short piece of rope, arranged as a grommet around a metal ring, used to attach tackle to a sail etc.
What part of speech is cringle?
Cringle can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of cringle?
The plural of cringle is cringles.

Words near cringle in the dictionary

  1. cringiness
  2. cringing
  3. cringingly
  4. cringingness
  5. cringings
  6. cringle
  7. cringle-crangle
  8. cringled
  9. Cringleford
  10. cringles
  11. cringling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cringle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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