Cockle
noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Any of various edible European bivalve mollusks, of the family Cardiidae, having heart-shaped shells.
"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."
- 2 Any of several field weeds, such as the common corncockle (Agrostemma githago) and darnel ryegrass (Lolium temulentum).
"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."
- 3 A £10 note; a tenner. Cockney, slang
- 4 common edible, burrowing European bivalve mollusk that has a strong, rounded shell with radiating ribs wordnet
- 5 The shell of such a mollusk.
Show 8 more definitions
- 6 common edible European bivalve wordnet
- 7 A wrinkle, pucker
- 8 A defect in sheepskin; firm dark nodules caused by the bites of keds on live sheep broadly
- 9 Chiefly in cockles of someone's heart: a person's innermost feelings. figuratively, in-plural
- 10 The dome of a heating furnace. UK
- 11 The fire chamber of a furnace. UK
- 12 A kiln for drying hops; an oast. UK
- 13 The mineral black tourmaline or schorl. Cornwall, UK
- 1 To cause to contract into wrinkles or ridges, as some kinds of cloth after a wetting; to pucker. transitive
- 2 To wobble, shake; to be unsteady. Midlands, Northern-England, Scotland
"Israel Wilde arrived last, his ankle swollen and already berry-blue after cockling at the top of Hatherself Scout."
- 3 to gather something into small wrinkles or folds wordnet
- 4 stir up (water) so as to form ripples wordnet
Example
More 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."
Etymology
From Middle English cokel, cokkel, kokkel, cocle, of uncertain origin. Perhaps a diminutive of Middle English cokke, cok (“cockle”), from Old English cocc (found in sǣcocc (“cockle”)) + -le; or perhaps from Old French coquille, from Vulgar Latin *cocchilia, from conchylia, from Ancient Greek κογχύλιον (konkhúlion), diminutive of κογχύλη (konkhúlē, “mussel”), of Pre-Greek substrate origin.
From Middle English cockil, cokil, cokylle, from Old English coccel (“darnel”), of unknown origin, perhaps from a diminutive of Latin coccus (“berry”).
Origin uncertain.
Rhyming slang, from cock and hen for ten.
Related phrases
More for "cockle"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.