crinkle

/ˈkrɪŋkəl/

Other forms: crinkled; crinkling; crinkles

When you ball up a piece of paper in your hand, you crinkle it — you make a smooth thing wrinkled.

Use the verb crinkle to describe what happens when you ball up a freshly ironed shirt and shove it in a suitcase, or the way your favorite teacher scrunches her eyes when she smiles. You can also call the creases or wrinkles themselves crinkles. You might become so annoyed at the crinkles in your curtains that you take them down and iron them. Crinkle comes from the Old English crincan, "to bend or to yield."

Definitions of crinkle

1. verb

   make wrinkles or creases on a smooth surface; make a pressed, folded or wrinkled line in
   synonyms: crease, crisp, ruckle, scrunch, scrunch up, wrinkle

   types:

   cockle, crumple, knit, pucker, rumple

   to gather something into small wrinkles or folds

   pucker, ruck, ruck up

   become wrinkled or drawn together

   type of:

   fold, fold up, turn up

   bend or lay so that one part covers the other
2. verb

   become wrinkled or crumpled or creased
   synonyms: crease, crumple, rumple, wrinkle

   type of:

   fold, fold up

   become folded or folded up
3. noun

   a slight depression in the smoothness of a surface
   synonyms: crease, furrow, line, seam, wrinkle

   types:

   crow's feet, crow's foot, laugh line

   a wrinkle in the skin at the outer corner of your eyes

   dermatoglyphic

   the lines that form patterns on the skin (especially on the fingertips and the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet)

   frown line

   a facial wrinkle associated with frowning

   life line, lifeline, line of life

   a crease on the palm; its length is said by palmists to indicate how long you will live

   heart line, line of heart, love line, mensal line

   a crease on the palm; palmists say it indicates your emotional nature

   line of Saturn, line of destiny, line of fate

   a crease on the palm; palmists say it indicates how successful you will be

   type of:

   depression, impression, imprint

   a concavity in a surface produced by pressing