Crunkle

Crunkle is a nice word. It looks funky on the page - first 4 letters in a nice conventional set followed by a weirder 3, with a balanced mix of curves and lines - and it sounds nice, rolling around sounding like a gentler, fatter version of what it means (OED 1). Unlike the word "awkward", which while looking fittingly uncomfortable in itself, is neither good to look at (unless you like pointy, jabby things) nor say.
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Trying to figure out if crunkle is an example of "language really used by men", or whether it's more of the "poetic diction" register Wordsworth writes against in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads. At first it seemed to fit snugly with the first category, but:
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I only knew this 1st definition of crunkle before looking it up - "To wrinkle, rumple, crinkle" - and thought it was quite cute. And that's the one, obviously, I've stuck to. But it also means: 2, "To cry like a crane" (there's a word for that?!); and 3, "To make a harsh dry sound, as by grinding the jaws". Not so cute, then. More than that, the word has a slightly icky origin (though the OED isn't entirely sure about it, and it's a bit of a circuitous route) - from the OE "crincan", "to fall in battle, [...] ‘to draw oneself together in a bent form, to contract oneself stiffly, curl up’". So there was me thinking that crunkle was a typically functional, OE-derived word that said what it meant, and was used exactly when needed; "language really used by men". Despite sounding simple enough to be a Real (as opposed to Poetic) word, though, I've never heard it used; and whilst that's a shame in itself (nice words should be used), it also goes against my view that it's a Real word (rolling-off-the-tongue pronunciation, with a place in daily living). But then I wondered what Wordsworth actually means by "the real language of men" - does he mean words that sound common/simple/functional, probably from OE stock; or words that are in active and frequent use, regardless of their complexity or etymology (in which case, "crunkle" would likely be classified as Poetic and defunct)? Does it mean only those words used in every social class and geographical location? As soon as these kinds of restrictions start rolling in the language pool suddenly gets very small indeed, and Wordsworth himself couldn't make much of it. So I think he uses a blend of, well, his principles and a bit of cheating, really.
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He looks to "humble and rustic life" for inspiration, because apparently them there Zomerzet farmers "speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, [...] in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." Bit idyllic, but okay. And then he cheats a bit (the swine!) - over the rustic goodness he throws "a certain colouring of imagination", and goes on to justify metre and rhyme. Neither of which, last I heard down yere in Zomerzet, the humble rustic much use. So it doesn't matter whether they use crunkle or not -what matters is that they might, could, or should; which means that whilst it sounds like a word that would be used in Rural Places, it's also rare enough to be zingy and so be a word towards a good poem. That's agreeable. (Ignore, please, that my observation of 21st century Zomerzet vocab isn't very helpful when talking about a 15th century word - Wordsworth probably wouldn't have cared). His justifications for metre (and rhyme, to a lesser extent - probably because it's much more difficult to tackle, as rhyme just sounds stupid regardless of who the poet is) are worth having a look at (whole Preface found here).
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Regardless of his attempts to capture what matters and what's felt in the world, though, I can't help feeling Wordy is upstaged a bit by his sister. Dorothy's journals are easily obtainable, and they make for some relief-ful reading amidst all the male Romantic troupe. Her writing was inspiration for some of William's poetry, and I think she sometimes does in her prosaic way what he never quite manages in most of his verse: she captures life and movement with few words (and even fewer Latinate). Here, from the Grasmere Journal (April, 1802):

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I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about & about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.

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Compare that to Wordy's 'I wondered lonely as a cloud', and see what you think. It might just be that rhyme irritates me too much. The unadulterated seeing of Dorothy's seems, to me, to say far more than her brother's words do after they've been forced into a mathematical frame; though I do like the way he writes (prose).