Word: wink Part of Speech: verb Etymology: From Middle English wynken, from Old English wincian (“to wink, make a sign, close the eyes, blink”, weak verb), from Proto-West Germanic *winkōn (“to close one's eyes”), 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 वङ्गति (vaṅgati, “(he, she) limps”), French guigner (“to eye, sneak a look at”). Pronunciation: /ˈwɪŋk/, [ˈwɪŋk] 1. To close one's eyes in sleep. Labels: intransitive, obsolete Example: When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see, For all the day they view things unrespected; But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, And darkly bright are bright in dark directed. 2. To close one's eyes. Labels: intransitive, obsolete Example: Art thou ashamed to kiss? then wink again, And I will wink; so shall the day seem night […] Example: I kept my eyes shut, after once glancing at him; and, I protest, I thought I saw him still, though I winked as close as ever I could. 3. Usually followed by at: to look the other way, to turn a blind eye. Labels: archaic, intransitive Example: Some trot about to bear false witness, and say anything for money; and though judges know of it, yet for a bribe they wink at it, and suffer false contracts to prevail against equity. Example: But man doth know / The ſpring, whence all things flow: / And yet, as though he knew it not, / His knowledge winks, and lets his humours reigne: / They make his life a conſtant blot, / And all the bloud of God to run in vain. 4. To close one's eyes quickly and involuntarily; to blink. Labels: archaic, intransitive Example: The pipes began to be puffed in a silence which had an air of severity; the more important customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the fire, staring at each other as if a bet were depending on the first man who ‘’’winked’’’ […] 5. 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.) Labels: intransitive, transitive Example: He winked at me. She winked her eye. He winked his assent. Example: Oliver saw Kit Carson wink at the lieutenant and Lucien Maxwell, as the speech reached them, and it was evident that these three leaders did not believe the Indian tales. Consequently he himself decided that the reports of "evil spirits" awaiting were all bosh. 6. To gleam fitfully or intermittently; to twinkle; to flicker. Labels: intransitive Example: Down in the bottoms the sycamore and cottonwood are casting off their yellowing leaves; but the white oak will cling to her gorgeous finery till the blizzard comes shrieking up the gulch to wrest it from her, or until the winking prairie-fire leaps among her branches, and mounting upward to the highest limbs, finally leaves the vain beauty a blackened skeleton. Example: Her kitchen is a series of Still Lives; the copper pans wink on the walls.