Word.ws English Dictionary

winking at

winking at is the present participle and gerund of wink at.

Meaning of wink at

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To turn a blind eye to (something); to corruptly ignore (some wrongdoing); to pretend not to have seen (something); to signal one's approval of (illicit activities) while maintaining the ability to plausibly deny knowing about it; to tolerate or tacitly encourage (inappropriate, immoral or illegal behavior).

Questions about winking at

What is winking at the present participle and gerund of?
Winking at is the present participle and gerund of wink at.

Words near winking at in the dictionary

  1. winkie
  2. winkies
  3. winkin'
  4. winkiness
  5. winking
  6. winking at
  7. winking monkey
  8. winking monkeys
  9. winking owl
  10. winkingly
  11. winkings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: winking at (page history and authors); wink at (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: “winking at.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/winking_at. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.