wink

verb

1. (intransitive, obsolete)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.”

2. (intransitive)To close one's eyes.

   “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.”

3. (intransitive)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.”

   “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.”

4. (intransitive)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’’’ […]”

5. (intransitive, transitive)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.”

   “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. (intransitive)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.”

   “Her kitchen is a series of Still Lives; the copper pans wink on the walls.”

noun

1. An act of winking (a blinking of only one eye), or a message sent by winking.
2. 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.”

   “Couldn't sleep a wink last night / Oh how I'd love to hold you tight”

3. A brief time; an instant.
4. The smallest possible amount.

   “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.”

5. A subtle allusion.

   “The film includes a wink to wartime rationing.”

6. Synonym of tiddlywink (“small disc used in the game of tiddlywinks”).
7. (British, slang)Synonym of periwinkle (“type of mollusk”).

   ““I buy my winks,” said one, “at Billingsgate, at 3s. and 4s. the wash. A wash is about a bushel. […]””