wink-wink
wink-wink verb: to turn a blind eye to something; to make an indirect reference to something unspoken, especially something indecent.
Verb
wink-wink (third-person singular simple present wink-winks, present participle wink-winking, simple past and past participle wink-winked)
- To turn a blind eye to something; to make an indirect reference to something unspoken, especially something indecent.
- But instead of wink-winking at the law, I think the brave and righteous thing to do is to celebrate marijuana's true and most profound medicinal quality: It makes people feel good.2010, Michael Konik, Reefer Gladness, page 49
- Though JFK was praised as a family man—married to the most glamorous first lady of the twentieth century—the press corps and the public wink-winked throughout his presidency.2017, David Friend, The Naughty Nineties, Twelve Books
Noun
wink-wink (plural wink-winks)
- The act of turning a blind eye to something.
- In its totality, the serial 'roid revelations over the past week have created suspicions that a system of wink-winks and pinkie swears among stars, management and agents has existed through the last minute of baseball's unpoliced steroid era.2005 February 15, Selena Roberts, “The Silent Treatment Is the Wrong Medicine”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 May...
- They would normally call you and say, ‘I need A, B and C.’ Now, it’s ‘I need A, B and C, and I need you to keep it on the up and up,’ ” he said. “They’ll say, ‘I want this all done legally, and I want no wink-winks.’2008 August 25, Victoria Kim, quoting John [James] Nazarian, “Spotlight falls on lawyers’ ties to PIs”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC...
Forms of wink-wink
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | wink-winks |
| present participle | wink-winking |
| past participle | wink-winked |
| past | wink-winked |
| Noun | |
| plural | wink-winks |
Origin of wink-wink
As with nudge nudge wink wink, a reference to alluding in a nonverbal way via gestures.
Questions about wink-wink
- What does wink-wink mean?
- Wink-wink means to turn a blind eye to something; to make an indirect reference to something unspoken, especially something indecent.
- What part of speech is wink-wink?
- Wink-wink can be a verb or a noun.
- What is the past tense of wink-wink?
- The past tense of wink-wink is wink-winked.
Words near wink-wink in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wink-wink (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.
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Cite this entry: “wink-wink.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wink-wink. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.