Word.ws English Dictionary

pilliwinkes

pilliwinkes is the obsolete form of pilliwinks.

Meaning of pilliwinks

Noun

pilliwinks pl (plural only)

  1. (Scotland, historical, plural, plural-only) A torture device for squeezing the fingers; a thumbscrew.
    • [H]er maiſter to the intent that he might the better trie and finde out the truth of the ſame, did with the help of others, torment her with the torture of the Pilliwinkes upon her fingers, which is a grieuous torture, [...][1592?], attributed to James Carmichael, Newes from Scotland. Declaring the Damnable Life of Doctor Fian a Notable Sorcerer, who was Burned at Edenbrough in Ianuarie last. 1591. […], [London]...

Questions about pilliwinkes

What is pilliwinkes the obsolete form of?
Pilliwinkes is the obsolete form of pilliwinks.

Words near pilliwinkes in the dictionary

  1. pillioning
  2. pillionist
  3. pillionists
  4. pillions
  5. pillionwise
  6. pilliwinkes
  7. pilliwinks
  8. pillmaker
  9. pillmakers
  10. pillmaking
  11. pillmonger

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pilliwinkes (page history and authors); pilliwinks (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “pilliwinkes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pilliwinkes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.