wink

Formswinks, winking, winked

Pluralwinks

1. 1
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To close and open one eye briefly as a signal or hint, usually suggesting a shared secret.

   Regular customers wink at the bartender to order their usual.

   She winked a silent warning to her colleague during the meeting.

   Note

   The one-eyed signal is the most flexible sense grammatically. Used intransitively, it takes at for the person signaled (he winked at me). Used transitively, its object can be the eye itself (she winked her eye) or the message (he winked his assent). The usual undertone is complicity, as when Kit Carson winks at two fellow leaders in Edwin L. Sabin's With Carson and Frémont (1912).

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A brief closing of one eye, or the signal or message communicated by doing so.

   A conspiratorial wink passed between the two old friends.

   Her wink across the table told everyone the surprise was still on.

   Note

   In writing, the gesture has its own spelling: ;) or ;-) or the 😉 emoji. Added after a line, it marks the words as knowing or not quite serious, which is exactly what a wink across a table does. As a noun, it pairs naturally with adjectives of complicity: a conspiratorial wink, a knowing wink.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A brief period of sleep, especially in the phrase forty winks.

   He caught forty winks before the late shift began.

   A quick wink on the train was all the rest he needed.

   Similarnap, doze, snooze, catnap

   Note

   Two fixed phrases carry nearly all of this sense. Forty winks is a short nap taken on purpose. Not sleep a wink is its opposite, a whole night without rest. Examples include W. Somerset Maugham's "I shouldn't sleep a wink" (1919) and a 1973 Roxy Music song whose singer has not slept a wink all night. The second phrase lives in the negative and is rarely heard in a positive sentence.

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To close and open the eyes quickly and involuntarily; to blink.

   She winked against the harsh stage lights without thinking.

   Drivers often wink when a bug strikes the windshield.

   Similarblink

   Note

   Here wink is the reflex flicker that loses a staring match. In Silas Marner, the drinkers stare at each other "as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked." Because the same verb also names the deliberate one-eyed signal, this sense depends on context to be understood. When no signal is meant, blink is the safer choice.

5. 5
   verbintransitive

   To deliberately overlook something wrong; to pretend not to notice, usually followed by at.

   The authorities winked at the illegal stalls for years.

   Some referees wink at minor fouls to keep the game flowing.

   Similarconnive

   Note

   Closing the eyes becomes a moral act here. John Tillotson's 1664 sermon says the wicked "are not blind; but they wink." The verb usually takes at, and it moves easily into the passive: in John Locke's words of 1693, obstinacy "cannot be winked at." What separates it from simply missing something is knowledge, because whoever winks at a fault has seen it. Connive, in its obsolete sense, meant the same.

6. 6
   verbintransitive

   To gleam unsteadily or intermittently; to twinkle or flicker.

   Distant city lights winked through the evening haze.

   Fireflies wink across the meadow on warm summer nights.

   Similartwinkle, flicker, glimmer, sparkle, blink

   Note

   Here the winking passes from the eye to light, and especially to polished surfaces. Katherine Mansfield, in a 1920 letter, writes that "the copper pans wink on the walls." The verb is intransitive and suits light that seems to shut and reopen, such as reflections, embers or distant lamps, rather than a steady glare. It sits beside twinkle and flicker, but it keeps the image of an eye closing and opening.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A very brief moment; an instant.

   The storm passed in a wink, leaving clear skies behind.

   She could read a page in a wink.

   Similarinstant, flash, jiffy, moment, trice

8. 8
   nouncountable

   A subtle hint or indirect allusion to something.

   The novel ends with a knowing wink toward its sequel.

   There was a sly wink to classic films throughout the script.

   Similarnod, hint, allusion, reference

   Note

   The one-eyed signal becomes a reference that a work makes to its audience. A film can include a wink to wartime rationing, and a novel can end with a wink toward its sequel. It takes to or toward. Like the gesture itself, it implies a private understanding: the allusion is meant to be caught by those in the know.

9. 9
   noun

   The smallest possible amount.

   The witness offered not a wink of useful evidence.

   He felt not a wink of guilt about the decision.

   Similarshred, scrap, iota, ounce, jot

   Note

   Like the wink of sleep, this sense lives in negatives: never a wink, not a wink. Jack London gives it to a dialect-speaking character in 1899: "niver a wink of the same have I seen." It keeps that conversational, emphatic ring, so it belongs in speech and lively narrative rather than measured prose.

10. 10
    verbintransitive

    To shut the eyes.

    He winked against the swirling sand on the beach.

    Children wink the moment the camera flash goes off.

    Similarblink, squint

    Note

    Older writers use wink for eyes that stay shut, not eyes that flicker. In Walter Scott's The Black Dwarf (1816), a speaker "winked as close as ever I could." In Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593), the line "wink again" asks for eyes shut long enough that "the day seem night." Modern readers expect the quick involuntary blink, so in older texts it helps to read wink as plain "shut the eyes."

11. 11
    nouncountable

    A small disc used in the game of tiddlywinks.

    He pressed the edge of his wink to send it flying.

    The winks scattered across the mat after a clumsy shot.

    Similartiddlywink

    Note

    A clipping of tiddlywink, and the ordinary word within the game for the small disc itself. The game keeps its full name, tiddlywinks, while the pieces are simply winks. It shares a spelling with the eye-closing words but not a history, so a player's wink has nothing to do with eyes.

12. 12
    nounslangBritishcountable

    A small edible sea snail; a periwinkle.

    Cockles and winks were sold from barrows along the seafront.

    A single wink made a salty, chewy mouthful.

    Similarperiwinkle

    Note

    A clipped form of periwinkle, and a separate word from the eye verb that only happens to share its spelling. It is British slang at home in market talk. One of Henry Mayhew's street sellers, in 1851, buys his "winks" at Billingsgate "at 3s. and 4s. the wash," a wash being about a bushel. Outside informal British speech, periwinkle is the safer choice.

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