the.com/crimp

means To crimp is to pinch, press, or bend something into a tight fold or ridge — or, more loosely, to cramp someone's style or plans.

from From Middle Low German or Middle Dutch 'krimpen,' meaning to shrink or contract — a word that traveled into English around the 1600s to describe pinching cloth into tight pleats with heated irons. The sense of 'putting a crimp in' someone's plans is American, arising in the 1800s as an extension of that same squeezing, constricting feeling — your options folded down like fabric under the iron.