wink
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
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”).
Inflected forms:
form: winks
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: winking
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: winked
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: winked
pos: verb
tags: past
form: winks
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To close one's eyes in sleep.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
obsolete
examples: 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.
gloss: To close one's eyes.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
obsolete
examples: Art thou ashamed to kiss? then wink again,
And I will wink; so shall the day seem night […]
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.
gloss: Usually followed by at: to look the other way, to turn a blind eye.
pos: verb
tags: archaic
intransitive
examples: 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.
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.
Therefore the scripture represents wicked men as without understanding […] they are not blind; but they wink; […] though they know God, yet they do not glorify him as God […]
But whenever obstinacy, which is an open defiance, appears, that cannot be winked at, or neglected, but must, in the first instance, be subdued and mastered; only care must be had, that we mistake not ; and we must be sure it is obstinacy, and nothing else.
For although the Queen had ordered a little Equipage of all things neceſſary while I was in her Service, yet my Ideas were wholly taken up with what I ſaw on every ſide of me, and winked at my own Littleneſs as People do at their own Faults.
gloss: To close one's eyes quickly and involuntarily; to blink.
pos: verb
tags: archaic
intransitive
examples: 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’’’ […]
gloss: 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.)
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
transitive
examples: He winked at me. She winked her eye. He winked his assent.
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.
gloss: To gleam fitfully or intermittently; to twinkle; to flicker.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: 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.
Her kitchen is a series of Still Lives; the copper pans wink on the walls.
gloss: An act of winking (a blinking of only one eye), or a message sent by winking.
pos: noun
gloss: A brief period of sleep; especially forty winks.
pos: noun
examples: I couldn't bear to leave him where he is. I shouldn't sleep a wink for thinking of him.
I shan't sleep a wink.
Couldn't sleep a wink last night / Oh how I'd love to hold you tight
gloss: A brief time; an instant.
pos: noun
gloss: The smallest possible amount.
pos: noun
examples: It’s many’s the time I shot the selfsame rifiie before, and it’s many ’s the time after, but niver a wink of the same have I seen. 'T was the sight of a lifetime.
gloss: A subtle allusion.
pos: noun
examples: The film includes a wink to wartime rationing.
Synonyms: nictitate
Derived words: wink at
wink out
a nod is as good as a wink
a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse
butt wink
forty winks
God wink
God-wink
in the wink of an eye
kiddle-a-wink
nudge nudge wink wink
quick as a wink
sleep a wink
tip the wink
wink-a-peep
wink murder
wink-wink
wink wink nudge nudge
Translations: