wink

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   signal by winking

   I winked at them.

2. 2
   verb

   To close one's eyes in sleep.

   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.

3. 3
   verb

   To close one's eyes.

   Art thou ashamed to kiss? then wink again, And I will wink; so shall the day seem night […]

4. 4
   verb

   Usually followed by at: to look the other way, to turn a blind eye.

   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.

5. 5
   verb

   To close one's eyes quickly and involuntarily; to blink.

   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’’’ […]

6. 6
   verb

   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.)

   He winked at me. She winked her eye. He winked his assent.

7. 7
   verb

   To gleam fitfully or intermittently; to twinkle; to flicker.

   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.

8. 8
   noun

   A brief period of sleep; especially forty winks.

   I couldn't bear to leave him where he is. I shouldn't sleep a wink for thinking of him.

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 a…