Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To fold or wrinkle.
  • To curl or frizzle, as hair.
  • To adorn with fringes, frills, or other ornaments of dress.
  • To wrinkle the forehead; frown.
  • noun A flounce, fold, plait, or frill, as of a garment; a wrinkle; a crease.
  • noun A disease in hawks in which white spittle gathers about the bill.
  • noun A disease in a horse's mouth in which a mass of pimples appears on the palate; the pimples themselves.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To gather into or adorn with plaits, as a dress; to form wrinkles in or upon; to curl or frizzle, as the hair.
  • intransitive verb obsolete To form wrinkles in the forehead; to manifest displeasure; to frown.
  • noun obsolete A wrinkle, plait, or curl; a flounce; -- also, a frown.
  • noun An affection in hawks, in which white spittle gathers about the hawk's bill.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A canker in the mouth of a hawk.
  • verb rare To curl.
  • verb rare To crease, wrinkle, to frown.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English frouncen, from Old French froncir "to wrinkle, frown", from Frankish *hrunkja "a wrinkle" from Proto-Germanic *hrunkijō, *hrunkitō (“fold, wrinkle”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”). Akin to Old High German runza "fold, wrinkle, crease" (German Runzel "wrinkle"), Middle Dutch ronse "frown", Old Norse hrukka "wrinkle, crease" (Icelandic hrukka "wrinkle, crease, ruck"). More at ruck2.

Support

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Examples

  • I say that the eyas should have her meat unwashed, until she becomes a brancher — ’twere the ready way to give her the frounce, to wash her meat sooner, and so knows every one who knows a gled from a falcon.”

    The Abbot 2008

  • 7 Some frounce their curled hair in courtly guise; frounce > twist into folds, plait guise > manner

    The Faerie Queene — Volume 01 Edmund Spenser

Comments

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  • Why is there a word for "a canker in the mouth of a hawk"? Is that really something we need a specific word for? Why not just call it a canker?

    March 24, 2014

  • *quietly adds this word to falconry and farriery lists*

    March 24, 2014

  • Why have a specific word for anything? Why not just grunt and point?

    March 24, 2014

  • *frowns*

    March 24, 2014

  • *France*

    March 24, 2014

  • *flounces in*

    March 24, 2014

  • *flounces out*

    March 24, 2014

  • Save the last flounce for me!

    March 24, 2014

  • *rearranges flounce card*

    March 24, 2014

  • I luvs me a good frouncing.

    March 24, 2014

  • He listens to boring accounts

    Of places he cannot pronounce,

    Hiding incomprehension

    With feigned close attention

    And solemn executive frounce.

    September 3, 2018