The AI-powered English dictionary
plural cockles
Any of various edible European bivalve mollusks, of the family Cardiidae, having heart-shaped shells. quotations examples
His wife, a small woman who walked always on high heels, borrowed Gerhardie's primus stove several times a day to cook her husband gargantuan meals of cockles, mussels, snails, and other such unpalatables.
1990, Dido Davies, Andrew Davies, William Gerhardie: A Biography, page 164
The shell of such a mollusk. examples
(in the plural) One’s innermost feelings (only in the expression “the cockles of one’s heart”). examples
(directly from French coquille) A wrinkle, pucker examples
(by extension) A defect in sheepskin; firm dark nodules caused by the bites of keds on live sheep examples
(mining, UK, Cornwall) The mineral black tourmaline or schorl. examples
(UK) The fire chamber of a furnace. examples
(UK) A kiln for drying hops; an oast. examples
(UK) The dome of a heating furnace. examples
third-person singular simple present cockles, present participle cockling, simple past and past participle cockled
(transitive) To cause to contract into wrinkles or ridges, as some kinds of cloth after a wetting; to pucker. examples
Any of several field weeds, such as the common corncockle (Agrostemma githago) and darnel ryegrass (Lolium temulentum). quotations examples
But cockle, spurge, according to their law / Might propagate their kind, with none to awe, / You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove.
1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section X
(Scotland, Northern England, Midlands) To wobble, shake; to be unsteady. quotations examples
Israel Wilde arrived last, his ankle swollen and already berry-blue after cockling at the top of Hatherself Scout.
2017, Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole, Bloomsbury, published 2019, page 32
(Cockney rhyming slang) A £10 note; a tenner.