cockle

1 of 3

noun (1)

cock·​le ˈkä-kəl 

: any of several weedy plants of the pink family

especially : corn cockle

cockle

2 of 3

noun (2)

1

: any of various chiefly marine bivalve mollusks (family Cardiidae) having a shell with convex radially ribbed valves

especially : a common edible European bivalve (Cerastoderma edule synonym Cardium edule)

2

: cockleshell

cockle

3 of 3

noun (3)

: pucker, wrinkle

cockle verb

Examples of cockle in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

Dishes, which veer towards smaller format options, include shao bing flatbread, cockles with loofah gourd, and three-cup squid. —Kristen Tauer, Footwear News, 5 June 2025

For this study, the team looked closely at clams, oysters, cockles, and other mollusks that were alive just before and after the fifth mass extinction during the end-Cretaceous period (66 million years ago). —Stephanie Edwards, Discover Magazine, 4 June 2025

And in terms of aesthetics, it’s constructed from the kind of hard lines that warm the cockles of anyone who loves Bauhaus buildings or wants to LARP Ocean’s 11. —Tom Mylan, Bon Appetit Magazine, 28 May 2025

This is, however, the kind of plan that warms the cockles of a progressive’s heart. —Stephen J. K. Walters, Baltimore Sun, 16 Mar. 2025

As such, heart cockles tend to avoid bleaching in warmer waters, a phenomenon that affects both corals and other clams. —Carlyn Kranking, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Dec. 2024

Of the three tasting menus, the Earth and Sea option includes wide-ranging small-bite flavor sensations like cockle and plankton meringue, tuna belly and caviar tartlet, cannelloni with lobster and foie gras, and sole à la meunière with a champagne emulsion. —John Oseid, Forbes, 17 Dec. 2024

While the cockles could give the algae some light by periodically opening their shells, doing so would leave their tender insides vulnerable to predators. —Ben Coxworth, New Atlas, 5 Dec. 2024

The cockles of whose heart were most likely to be warmed by such a speech? —Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 25 July 2024

Word History

Etymology

Noun (1)

Middle English, from Old English coccel

Noun (2)

Middle English cokle, cokkel, cokille "the mollusk Cerastoderma edule, its shell," borrowed from Anglo-French coquile, cokile "eggshell, shell of the cockle or scallop" (continental Old & Middle French coquille), going back to Vulgar Latin *cocīlia or *cocŭlia "shell of a mollusk, nut or egg," alteration of Latin conchȳlia, plural (taken in Vulgar Latin as feminine singular) of conchȳlium "mollusk, shellfish," borrowed from Greek konchýlion "seashell," double diminutive of kónchē "clam, mussel, conch"

Note: The etymon with a long front vowel (*co(n)cīlia) is evident in French coquille, Old Occitan cauquilha and a variety of Gallo-Romance dialect forms (see Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, vol. 2, pp. 1002-06), as well as a scattering of Romance forms elsewhere, as Neapolitan skontšiłə "the sea snail Hexaplex trunculus" (see scungilli), Corsican kuntšíłulu "kind of snail," regional Portuguese (Algarve) conquilho "mussel." The form with short u (*cocŭlia) is attested as cagouille "snail, escargot" in western dialects of French (Aunis, Saintonge, Poitou) and cocoille in central dialects (Touraine, Berry); it is also recorded in adjacent dialects of Occitan (Old Occitan cogolha "snail," Dordogne cagoulho). There are again scattered forms in Italo-Romance: kaguya, kuguya "snail" (Rovinj/Rovigno, Istrian Peninsula), concule "kind of mollusk" (Marche), koɳguyə (Abruzzi). Nearly all forms show loss of the nasal consonant and the failure of the front vowel variants to palatalize the velar consonant. Both of these changes have been ascribed to blending with another word, perhaps Latin coccum "the scale insect Kermes ilicis (thought to be a berry or excrescence on the plant)" or *cuscolium with the same sense. The result was a vowel sequence o - o, sometimes dissimilating to a - o. Another conjectural variant attested in eastern Occitan has an added stressed syllable: kakaláw "snail, empty nutshell" (Bas-Dauphiné, i.e., western Dauphiné), cacaláou "snail" (Provence), cagarol (Béziers)—see etymology and note at escargot. — Oxford Latin Dictionary has conchȳlium with long ȳ, which fits the Romance outcome, though length is not indicated for the Greek word in Liddell and Scott or the Cambridge Greek Lexicon.

Noun (3)

Middle English kokell, ultimately from Middle French coquillé wavy or rounded like a shell, from coquille

First Known Use

Noun (1)

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above

Noun (2)

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Noun (3)

15th century, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing cockle

• cockles of the heart
• corn cockle
• warm the cockles of someone's heart

Rhymes for cockle

• cryptococcal
• gonococcal
• pneumococcal
• streptococcal
• debacle
• meningococcal
• staphylococcal

Kids Definition

cockle

1 of 2 noun

cock·​le ˈkäk-əl 

: any of several weeds of grain fields

cockle

2 of 2 noun

1

: an edible mollusk with a ribbed two-valved shell

2

: cockleshell

Etymology

Noun

Old English coccel "weed"

Noun

Middle English cokille "cockle, cockleshell," from early French coquille "shell," from Latin conchylia "shells," derived from Greek konchylion, literally, "little shell"