cockle

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɒkl̩/

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• Rhymes: -ɒkəl

Cockles

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.

cockle (plural cockles)

1. Any of various edible European bivalve mollusks, of the family Cardiidae, having heart-shaped shells.
   • 1990, Dido Davies, Andrew Davies, William Gerhardie: A Biography, page 164:

     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. The shell of such a mollusk.
3. (in the plural) One’s innermost feelings (only in the expression “the cockles of one’s heart”).
4. (directly from French coquille) A wrinkle, pucker
5. (by extension) A defect in sheepskin; firm dark nodules caused by the bites of keds on live sheep
6. (mining, UK, Cornwall) The mineral black tourmaline or schorl.[1]
7. (UK) The fire chamber of a furnace.[2]
8. (UK) A kiln for drying hops; an oast.[3]
9. (UK) The dome of a heating furnace.[4]

• scallop

cockle (third-person singular simple present cockles, present participle cockling, simple past and past participle cockled)

1. (transitive) To cause to contract into wrinkles or ridges, as some kinds of cloth after a wetting; to pucker.

Wikispecies

Wikispecies From Middle English cockil, cokil, cokylle, from Old English coccel (“darnel”), of unknown origin, perhaps from a diminutive of Latin coccus (“berry”).

cockle (plural cockles)

1. Any of several field weeds, such as the common corncockle (Agrostemma githago) and darnel ryegrass (Lolium temulentum).
   • 1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section X:

     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.

• (Lolium temulentum): darnel, false wheat

• cheat
• ryegrass
• tare
• vetch

Origin uncertain.

cockle (third-person singular simple present cockles, present participle cockling, simple past and past participle cockled)

1. (Scotland, Northern England, Midlands) To wobble, shake; to be unsteady. [from 17th c.]
   • 2017, Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole, Bloomsbury, published 2019, page 32:

     Israel Wilde arrived last, his ankle swollen and already berry-blue after cockling at the top of Hatherself Scout.

Rhyming slang, from cock and hen for ten.

cockle (plural cockles)

1. (Cockney rhyming slang) A £10 note; a tenner.

• Elcock, clocke