[cf. Fr. coquiller to form coquilles i.e., inflated elevations or blisters on the crust of bread. Cotgrave (1611) has coquiller … to fashion anything like a shell; also recoquiller to wriggle, writhe, turn into itself … like a gold or silver thread where it is broken; recoquiller un livre, to rumple or turn up the leaves of (a book). But if this is the source, the word must have subsequently taken up other associations in English.]
In senses 1 and 2, now chiefly techn. or dial.
1. intr. Of cloth, paper, or the like: To bulge out in parts so as to present an uneven, wrinkled or creased surface; to go into rucks, to pucker.
1552–1691. [see COCKLING vbl. sb.1]
1599. Hakluyt, Voy., II. I. 162. The sorting together of Wools of seuerall natures, some of nature to shrinke, some to hold out, which causeth cloth to cockle and lie vneuen.
1711. Swift, Jrnl. to Stella, 23 Oct. They said that English silk would cockle.
1873. H. Spencer, Stud. Sociol., xi. 270. This wrought-iron plate is not quite flat: it sticks up a little here towards the left—‘cockles’ as we say.
1877. N. W. Lincolnsh. Gloss., Cockle-up, to blister, expand irregularly, curl up as paper does when wetted.
1888. Sheffield Gloss., Cockle, to wrinkle. Said of woollen goods when they have been rained upon.
2. trans. To cause to pucker, to wrinkle, crease.
1691. T. H[ale], Acc. New Invent., 94. It … helps to crack and cockle the thinner parts.
1808. Ann. Reg., 1806. 442. Which book is bent and cockled up, evidently appearing to have been soaked through by the wet.
3. intr. To rise into short tumbling waves: see COCKLING ppl. a. 2. [This sense is of doubtful origin: it approaches also the next word.]
