shrivel

Etymology

Its origin is unknown,^[2][3][4][5] and it is not found in Middle English.^[6] The dictionaries that suggest a source look to Scandinavia,^{[7][8][9][6][10]} comparing the Swedish dialect word skryvla (“to wrinkle”).^{[2][7][8][11][5]} Skeat also compared Swedish skroflig (“rough”) and German schroff (“rugged”).^[12] Dictionary.com adds Old English sceorfan (“to roughen”) and refers to scurf.^[13] Etymonline suggests an ultimate connection with shrimp and shrink,^[6] and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins says it comes from a Scandinavian word related to the latter.^[10] Middle English did have rivelled (“wrinkled, furrowed”), from Old English rifelede, a word Etymonline mentions beside it.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a noun, in the plural, for wrinkles in the skin: 1547, in A. Borde's Breuiary of Helthe.^[2][14] The OED derives this noun from the verb, which is dated later:^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged has it from 1565,^[4] and Barnhart and Etymonline first find it implied in the adjective shriveled, in 1568 and the 1560s.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

The verb first described things drawn into wrinkles or curling up, as from great heat or cold.^[2] Shakespeare's transitive use in Pericles is about bodies destroyed: "A fire from heaven came and shrivell'd up Their bodies".^[5][2] Johnson (1755) gives the transitive verb as "to contract into wrinkles", quoting Dryden on scorched corn blades.^[15] The figurative use, of making or becoming ineffectual or helpless, follows in the 17th century: transitively from 1665 and intransitively from 1680.^[2][14] The noun has stayed rare, and now means a shrivelled thing such as a withered nut or fruit.^[14][4]

Timeline

• 1547 – noun, in the plural, wrinkles in the skin.^[2][14]
• 1565 – intransitive verb, to become wrinkled and shrunken.^[4] The OED dates this sense from 1588.^[2]
• 1609 – transitive verb, to make wrinkled or shrunken, in Shakespeare's Pericles.^[2] Barnhart dates the play's use to 1608.^[5]
• 1665 – figurative, to reduce to helplessness or ineffectiveness.^[2]
• 1680 – figurative, to lose vitality or shrink mentally.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To become wrinkled and shrunken, as from heat, cold or lack of moisture, often with up: The grapes shrivelled on the vine.^[9][4][2]
2. To make something wrinkled and shrunken: Late frost shrivelled the young shoots.^[9][4][2]
3. To lose, or make lose, vitality, will or effect: His confidence shrivelled at the first question.^{[9][4][2][14]}

Noun

1. (rare) Something shrivelled, such as a withered nut or fruit.^[4][14][2]
2. (obsolete) In the plural, wrinkles in the skin.^[2][14]

Word family

• unshriveled

Related words

• shrink
• scurf
• rivel

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
14. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.