Thread: Asking for little explanation.

Hello,

I want to understand what's the difference between the following verbs:

crinkle
wrinkle
crease

Until now I thought that crinkle differs from wrinkle in the "noise" aspect. In other words, I had a notion that crinkle is to become covered with small folds making a rustling sound, and wrinkle is just to become covered with small folds. However, I dismissed the notion after I'd come across these two sentences:

Alex wrinkled up his nose at the smell
He smiled boyishly, crinkling his eyes

Those two sentences utterly ruined my belief which was based on the "noise" aspect. To top it all, I ran across the word "crease", which confused the issue even more. Now the whole thing looks like complete mayhem to me. I hope someone would be able to straigten that out for me.

Thanks in advance.

Igor, actually your question is very hard and expansible even for native English speakers.
So i will add up 2 more words for further questions.
This is what a native speaker said:

"Crinkle and crumple have sounds associated with them where as wrinkle and rumple do not. Crinkle and wrinkle having smaller and more set creases, where as crumple and rumple are more loosely creased. So take a piece of paper and wad it up in your hand LOOSELY (so you have a big, light-weight paper ball that would not go far if you threw it) it would make a crumpling noise when you form the ball. Then open up the paper ball and see what it looks like....that is rumpled.
Now take a piece of paper and wad it up in your hand TIGHTLY (now you have a small, compact paper ball that you could throw pretty far) it would make a crinkling noise when you form the ball. Then open up the paper and see what it looks like that is wrinkled."

If talk about clothing, this would be an example; Girls iron their skirts when they're wrinkled (creased badly and accidentally), yet go out and buy crinkle skirts (creased on purpose). And then, when they don't like their skirt anymore, they may crumple it up and throw it in the corner of their closet.

I also searched these and understand you can use either "Wrinkling nose" or "Crinkling nose".
Again, "Wrinkling eyes" or "Crinkling eyes". With almost no difference. Even if there is a difference, it should be in their usage. So it would be nice if a native speaker mention which one of the phrases is more commonly used.
You can also google them( with these "" marks ) and compare the results numbers.

But the only difference i myself got was this=D :
For cats and dogs, we can only use "wrinkle" in this phrase:
"The cat wrinkles it's nose"
And you cannot replace wrinkle with crinkle here!


Oh i searched a lot, hope it helps you at least a little!

And one more thing is , Wrinkle VS. Crease
In my dictionary [Longman] It is said that "Wrinkle" is a Synonym for "Crease".

However if we look at them eagerly, we will understand there is a little difference.

Crease: [source: Cambridge dictionary] If cloth, paper, etc. creases, or if you crease it, it gets a line in it where it has been folded or crushed.
Exp: 1-The seat belt has creased my blouse.
2-It's a nice dress, but it creases very easily

Now, Wrinkle: If skin or material wrinkles, or if something wrinkles it, it gets small lines or folds in it.

Differences:
1- If we say "clothes wrinkle", it is way more stronger (as it's commonly used) than when we say "clothes crease"
For Exp. Wrinkle is when you take out your clothes out of washing machine, Crease is like when you fasten your seat belt and your shirt gets a fine line. ( And also crease can be put in a nice/positive way, like when we use iron to put a crease in our pants )

2- Skin Creases =/= Skin Wrinkles
The explanation is more scientific, if you are interested you can google it, or i can give you a link.

When one folds a piece of paper length-wise, or in some particular way, the result is a crease in the paper. I don't recall ever seeing wrinkle being used for specific crease patterns. Like pleats, or accordion folds, these could be described as creases. Not as wrinkles. Wrinkles are usually not specific organized folds or designed surface features the way creases are.

If you unfolded an origami figure, you would have a piece of paper with specific creases/folds, not wrinkles.