crankle

Meanings

nouncrankle (plural crankles)

A bend, twist or crinkle.

verbcrankle (third-person singular simple present crankles, present participle crankling, simple past and past participle crankled)

present singular third person crankles · participle present crankling · participle past crankled · past crankled

To bend, turn, or wind.
Along the crankling path.
1603, Michael Drayton, The Barons' Wars
1 more example
Meander, who is said so intricate to bee, Hath not so many turnes, nor crankling nookes as shee.
1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 7 p. 105
To break into bends, turns, or angles; to crinkle.
Old Vaga's stream […] drew her humid train aslope, / Crankling her banks.
1708, John Philips, Cyder

Origin

From crank + -le. Coined by Michael Drayton in 1596. According to the Poly-Olbion project, "Drayton probably derived ‘crankling’ from ‘crank’, a word which had its first recorded usage in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1594) where it describes a hare which ‘crankes and crosses with a thousand doubles’."

Full word history & related roots →