Wizened means shriveled and wrinkled, usually from age or weathering. A wizened apple left too long in the fruit bowl becomes small, brown, and deeply creased. A wizened old sailor might have deeply lined skin from decades of sun and sea wind.

The word captures a specific kind of aging: dried out and contracted, like how a raisin looks compared to a fresh grape. You might read about a wizened grandmother in a story, her face mapped with wrinkles from a long life, or a wizened tree trunk, gnarled and twisted after years of harsh winters.

While wizened often describes people, it works for anything that has shrunk and wrinkled with time: wizened hands, wizened fruit, wizened leaves. The word usually applies to things that were once fuller or smoother but have slowly contracted and creased. There's something honest about it: wizened doesn't hide age but wears it plainly, like a favorite book whose pages have yellowed and whose spine has creased from being read again and again.