Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To bend, wind, or turn, as a stream.
  • To break into bends, turns, or angles; crinkle.
  • Weak; shattered.
  • noun A bend or turn; a crinkle; an angular prominence.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To bend, turn, or wind.
  • noun A bend or turn; a twist; a crinkle.
  • transitive verb To break into bends, turns, or angles; to crinkle.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a bend, twist or crinkle
  • verb to bend or twist

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • An orchard would be a place to grow up, Palmer thought, an orchard heavy with apples and with espaliered pear-trees growing against a sun-warmed crinkle-crankle wall.

    Sharpe's Siege Cornwell, Bernard 1987

  • The historic Thamesside garden received a revamp thanks to a £1.6 million lottery grant which paid for repairs to the 19th century gazebo and the serpentine crinkle-crankle retaining wall.

    getreading - Reading Post - RSS feed 2010

  • The historic Thamesside garden received a revamp thanks to a £1.6 million lottery grant which paid for repairs to the 19th century gazebo and the serpentine crinkle-crankle retaining wall.

    getreading - Reading Post - RSS feed 2010

  • The first stage of the £1.6 million restoration began with Wessex Archaelogy carrying out archaeological recording and investigation of the gazebo, the causeway walls and the undulating 'crinkle-crankle' - or serpentine - wall.

    getreading - Reading Post - RSS feed 2009

  • Poilibly Philips had the paflage in his mind, and borrowed from it the old word crankle.

    Cider a poem in two books 1791

  • o 'heaven, as I thoucht them, whan they war only the sma' crinkle-crankle convolutions o 'my cerebral dome-�a puir heaven for a man to bide in!

    Alec Forbes of Howglen George MacDonald 1864

Comments

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  • Neyther went those siluer pipes straight, but by many edged vnsundred writhings, & crankled wandrings aside strayed from bough to bough into an hundred throates.

    - Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller, 1594

    April 14, 2010

  • JM follows the intellectual path of the crankle.

    July 8, 2010