wink

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   To close and open one eye quickly as a friendly or secret signal.

   He winked at me to show he was only joking.

2. 2
   noun

   A quick closing of one eye as a signal.

   She gave him a wink across the room.

3. 3
   verb

   To deliberately ignore something wrong, usually with 'at'.

   The managers winked at the rule-breaking for years.

4. 4
   verb

   Of a light: to shine on and off; to flicker.

   The lights of the town winked in the distance.

Multiword verbs with wink

• wink at Prepositional verb B2

  to silently approve or knowingly overlook something improper

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Wink is an Old English word that originally meant simply “to close the eyes.” Its modern sense of quickly closing and reopening one eye developed later, while the older meaning survives in the history of hoodwink, originally “to blindfold with a hood.”

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 a…

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