winking

Verb

wink (third-person singular simple present winks, present participle winking, simple past and past participle winked)

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.1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 43”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC
2. (intransitive, obsolete) To close one's eyes.
   • Art thou ashamed to kiss? then wink again,
   • And I will wink; so shall the day seem night […]1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC
3. (archaic, 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.1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   connive, shut one's eyes

4. (archaic, 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’’’ […]1861, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter VI, in Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC
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.
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...1899, Will T. Whitlock, “The Circumflex”, in Overland Monthly, Vol. XXXIII, second series

See all 13 meanings of wink