Shrivel

//ˈʃɹɪvəl// verb

verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To collapse inward; to crumble. intransitive

    "The plant shrivelled from lack of water."

  2. 2
    decrease in size, range, or extent wordnet
  3. 3
    To become wrinkled. intransitive

    "His fingers were shriveled from being in the bath for too long."

  4. 4
    wither, as with a loss of moisture wordnet
  5. 5
    To draw into wrinkles. transitive

    "The hot sun shrivelled the leaves."

Synonyms

All synonyms
curl upshrinkageair-dryanhydrateattenuate

Example

More examples

"Your vagina is not going to shrivel up like a prune."

Etymology

First recorded as shriveled (“shrivelled”), probably of North Germanic origin related to dialectal Swedish skryvla (“to wrinkle, shrivel”); perhaps ultimately related to Proto-Germanic *skrinkwaną (“to shrivel, shrink”) or *skrimpaną (“to shrink”).

Related phrases

shrivel up

More for "shrivel"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.