Word.ws English Dictionary

wrinkling

wrinkling is the present participle and gerund of wrinkle.

Noun

wrinkling (plural wrinklings)

  1. A pattern of wrinkles.
    • The character of these wrinklings, when seen on the flat of the beds, forbids the idea that they are due to end on compression[…]1849, Journal of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland, volume 3, page 251
  2. The act of wrinkling.
    • Would she be able to appreciate the subtlety of their advances, if they made any; those little twitches and twists of the lips, those narrowings and rollings of the eye, those wrinklings of the speculative temple, that shrugging of an eyebrow at play?1950, Mervyn Peake, chapter 33, in Gormenghast (The Gormenghast Trilogy; II), revised edition, New York, N.Y.: Ballantine Books, published October 1968, →OCLC, page 236

Meaning of wrinkle

Verb

wrinkle (third-person singular simple present wrinkles, present participle wrinkling, simple past and past participle wrinkled)

  1. (transitive) To make wrinkles in; to cause to have wrinkles.
    • Be careful not to wrinkle your dress before we arrive.
  2. (intransitive) To pucker or become uneven or irregular.
    • An hour in the tub will cause your fingers to wrinkle.
  3. (intransitive) To develop irreversibly wrinkles; to age.
    • The skin is the substance that wrinkles, shows age, stretches, scars and cuts.
  4. (intransitive, obsolete) To sneer (at).
    • Ther's some weakenes in your brother you wrinkle at1604 (date written), Iohn Marston [i.e., John Marston], Parasitaster, or The Fawne, […], London: […] T[homas] P[urfoot] for W[illiam] C[otton], published 1606, →OCLC, (please specify the page)

See all 10 meanings of wrinkle

Forms of wrinkling

pluralwrinklings

Questions about wrinkling

What does wrinkling mean?
Wrinkling means a pattern of wrinkles.
What is wrinkling the present participle and gerund of?
Wrinkling is the present participle and gerund of wrinkle.
What part of speech is wrinkling?
Wrinkling is a noun.
What is the plural of wrinkling?
The plural of wrinkling is wrinklings.

Words near wrinkling in the dictionary

  1. wrinklie
  2. wrinklier
  3. wrinklies
  4. wrinkliest
  5. wrinkliness
  6. wrinkling
  7. wrinklings
  8. wrinkly
  9. wrinkly skin syndrome
  10. Wriothesley
  11. Wrisberg's cartilage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wrinkling (page history and authors); wrinkle (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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Cite this entry: “wrinkling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wrinkling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.