ruckle

Etymology 1

Variant of ruck.

verb

  1. To crease or wrinkle.

noun

  1. A disordered collection.
    Seldom he comes by this way ; but he is amang them yonder, wi' a hookit nose and chin, grey blear'd een, lang black hair, and a ruckle o' duds for claise o' a' sorts, wi' bits o' embroidery sewed on them. 1821, John Warren, William Blackwood, Bannockburn, a novel, page 57
    She can't sit in the car by herself for a couple of hours whilst I clamber up a rocky river bed to see a ruckle of stones and a view that you can't see for the rain and mist, so I magnanimously say I'll come with her. 2006, David M. Addison, A Meander in Menorca, page 246
    The ground there is a ruckle of loose stones arranged in flat beds by running water, possibly by streams which flow out of 'the Gulf of Mexico,' or whatever the name of the highest corrie may be. 2007, John Campbell, A Short American Tramp, page 213
    My father said to me after the harvest, 'Now your mother's a ruckle of bones in the kirkyard, there's nobody to knit sea stockings for us. 2014, George Mackay Brown, A Time to Keep
  2. A wrinkle.
    After the second lunch, with a little more to drink, he helped her into her coat more zealously, smoothing the material down over one should blade as if the cloth had suddenly thrown up a ruckle. 2010, Julian Barnes, Before She Met Me
    When she was little and I went to see her in bed, I often thought she wasn't there. She lay so neatly and so straight, without a ruckle and with her head just under the top of the bedclothes. 2013, Candida Lycett Green, Over The Hills And Far Away
    It meant ruckling his sock right down, and nobody likes a ruckly sock, but this was no time to be stopped by a ruckle. 2015, Georgia Pritchett, Wilf the Mighty Worrier: Saves the World

Etymology 2

Probably cognate with Dutch rogchelen (“to hawk”).

noun

  1. (Scotland) A rattling noise in the throat, as from suffocation.

verb

  1. (Scotland, intransitive) To make a rattling noise in the throat.

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