Meanings
ruckle1
present singular third person ruckles · participle present ruckling · participle past ruckled · past ruckled
plural ruckles
- A disordered collection.
My father said to me after the harvest, 'Now your mother's a ruckle of bones in the kirkyard, there's nobody to knit sea stockings for us.
2014, George Mackay Brown, A Time to Keep, →ISBN3 more examples
Seldom he comes by this way ; but he is amang them yonder, wi' a hookit nose and chin, grey blear'd een, lang black hair, and a ruckle o' duds for claise o' a' sorts, wi' bits o' embroidery sewed on them.
1821, John Warren, William Blackwood, Bannockburn, a novel, page 57She can't sit in the car by herself for a couple of hours whilst I clamber up a rocky river bed to see a ruckle of stones and a view that you can't see for the rain and mist, so I magnanimously say I'll come with her.
2006, David M. Addison, A Meander in Menorca, →ISBN, page 246The ground there is a ruckle of loose stones arranged in flat beds by running water, possibly by streams which flow out of 'the Gulf of Mexico,' or whatever the name of the highest corrie may be.
2007, John Campbell, A Short American Tramp, →ISBN, page 213 - A wrinkle.
It meant ruckling his sock right down, and nobody likes a ruckly sock, but this was no time to be stopped by a ruckle.
2015, Georgia Pritchett, Wilf the Mighty Worrier: Saves the World, →ISBN2 more examples
After the second lunch, with a little more to drink, he helped her into her coat more zealously, smoothing the material down over one should blade as if the cloth had suddenly thrown up a ruckle.
2010, Julian Barnes, Before She Met Me, →ISBNWhen she was little and I went to see her in bed, I often thought she wasn't there. She lay so neatly and so straight, without a ruckle and with her head just under the top of the bedclothes.
2013, Candida Lycett Green, Over The Hills And Far Away, →ISBN
ruckle2
plural ruckles
- ScotlandA rattling noise in the throat, as from suffocation.
present singular third person ruckles · participle present ruckling · participle past ruckled · past ruckled
- ScotlandintransitiveTo make a rattling noise in the throat.
Ruckle3
Synonyms & antonyms
verbmake wrinkles or creases on a smooth surface; make a pressed, folded or wrinkled line in; ‘crisp’ is archaic
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
ruckle · noun, verb
Probably cognate with Dutch rochelen (“to hawk”).
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with ruckle
Anagrams
Cite this entry
ruckle. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ruckle
“ruckle.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ruckle. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ruckle,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ruckle.
Source: ruckle on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.