wink

Meanings

Verb

• To close one's eyes in sleep.
• To close one's eyes.
• Usually followed by at: to look the other way, to turn a blind eye.
• To close one's eyes quickly and involuntarily; to blink.
• To blink with only one eye as a message, signal, or suggestion, usually with an implication of conspiracy. (When transitive, the object may be the eye being winked, or the message being conveyed.)
• To gleam fitfully or intermitently; to twinkle; to flicker.

Noun

• An act of winking (a blinking of only one eye), or a message sent by winking.
• A brief period of sleep; especially forty winks.
• A brief time; an instant.
• The smallest possible amount.
• A subtle allusion.
• A disc used in the game of tiddlywinks.
• (Chiefly British) Periwinkle.

Related

Similar words

• nictitate

Origin

• From Middle English winken and Middle English winken, from Old English *wincan and wincian, from Proto-Germanic *winkaną ("to move side to side, sway"), *winkōn, from Proto-Indo-European *weng- ("to bow, bend, arch, curve"). Cognate with Middle Low German winken ("to blink, wink"), German winken ("to nod, beckon, make a sign"). Related also to Saterland Frisian wäänke, Dutch wenken ("to beckon, motion"), Latin vacillare ("sway"), Lithuanian véngti ("to swerve, avoid"), Albanian vang ("tire, felloe"), Sanskrit वञ्चति ("he swaggers").
• Short form of periwinkle