Word.ws English Dictionary

crinkle

/ˈkɹɪŋkəl/

crinkle verb: to fold, crease, crumple, or wad.

Verb

crinkle (third-person singular simple present crinkles, present participle crinkling, simple past and past participle crinkled)

  1. (ambitransitive) To fold, crease, crumple, or wad.
    • He crinkled the wrapper and threw it out.
    • The old man's lined face crinkled into a smile.
  2. (intransitive) To rustle, as stiff cloth when moved.
    • The green wheat crinkles like a lake.1908, John Townsend Trowbridge, Vagabonds and other poems
    • All the rooms were full of crinkling silks.1856, Elizabeth Browning, Aurora Leigh

Noun

crinkle (plural crinkles)

  1. A wrinkle, fold, crease, or unevenness.
    • He observed the crinkles forming around his eyes and suddenly felt old.
  2. The act of crinkling.
  3. Chocolate crinkle; a type of cookie made of primarily cocoa powder, powdered sugar, and water

crinkle meaning in Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada and Persian

crinkle in Bengali

কুচকানো, ভাঁজ পড়া

crinkle in Malayalam

crease, wrinkle, pucker
ചുളുക്കുക, ചുളിക്കുക, ചുളുക്കുണ്ടാക്കുക, ചുരുട്ടുക, തെറുക്കുക, മേലോട്ടു ചുരുട്ടുക

crinkle in Kannada

ಸುಕ್ಕುಗಟ್ಟು

crinkle in Persian

wrinkle, fold, crease, or unevenness
گرنج garenj

Examples of crinkle in a sentence

  • Do you find whispering, crinkling paper, tapping fingernails or scratching soothing?
  • If you don't have a crinkle cutter, a fluted pastry wheel creates the same effect.
  • Because when her eyes twinkle and blinkle with excitement, her wrinkles crinkle up into a smile.

All 15 example sentences with crinkle

Forms of crinkle

Verb
third-person singular presentcrinkles
present participlecrinkling
past participlecrinkled
pastcrinkled
Noun
pluralcrinkles

Past tense of crinkle: crinkled

Origin of 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 North Frisian krenge, krönge (“to obtain, reach, attain”), Dutch krinkelen (“to turn, wind”). Related to cringe.

Words formed from crinkle

Phrases with crinkle

Words that rhyme with crinkle

5 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about crinkle

What does crinkle mean?
Crinkle means to fold, crease, crumple, or wad.
What is crinkle in Bengali?
Crinkle in Bengali is কুচকানো, ভাঁজ পড়া. See Crinkle meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is crinkle?
Crinkle can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce crinkle?
Crinkle is pronounced /ˈkɹɪŋkəl/.
What is the past tense of crinkle?
The past tense of crinkle is crinkled.

Words near crinkle in the dictionary

  1. crinitory
  2. crinivirus
  3. criniviruses
  4. crinière
  5. CRINK
  6. crinkle
  7. crinkle critter
  8. crinkle critters
  9. crinkle-crankle
  10. crinkle-crankles
  11. crinkle-cut

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crinkle (page history and authors); crinkle (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); crinkle (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); crinkle (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-crinkle.ogg.

Cite this entry: “crinkle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crinkle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.