cockle

noun

1. Any of various edible European bivalve mollusks, of the family Cardiidae, having heart-shaped shells.

   “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. A wrinkle, pucker
4. (broadly)A defect in sheepskin; firm dark nodules caused by the bites of keds on live sheep
5. (figuratively, in-plural)Chiefly in cockles of someone's heart: a person's innermost feelings.
6. (UK)The dome of a heating furnace.
7. (UK)The fire chamber of a furnace.
8. (UK)A kiln for drying hops; an oast.
9. (Cornwall, UK)The mineral black tourmaline or schorl.
10. Any of several field weeds, such as the common corncockle (Agrostemma githago) and darnel ryegrass (Lolium temulentum).

    “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.”

11. (Cockney, slang)A £10 note; a tenner.

verb

1. (transitive)To cause to contract into wrinkles or ridges, as some kinds of cloth after a wetting; to pucker.
2. (Midlands, Northern-England, Scotland)To wobble, shake; to be unsteady.

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