winkle out
winkle out verb: to acquire with difficulty, as by thorough scrutiny.
Verb
winkle out (third-person singular simple present winkles out, present participle winkling out, simple past and past participle winkled out)
- To acquire with difficulty, as by thorough scrutiny.
- Tom managed to winkle the truth out of John eventually.
- He watched her blink rapidly and choose a difference sort of release: “I mean, since you’re so good at winkling people out!”2004, Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN
- To get (something or someone) out of an entrenched position.
- […] was mopping up the remnants of German resistance and trying to winkle out individual enemy soldiers from their hiding places.2011, Ken Ford, Operation Archery: The Commandos and the Vaagso Raid 1941, page 59
- […] using cloak-and-dagger methods to winkle out unwanted tenants and assemble vacant sites […]2012, Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture, page 67
Forms of winkle out
| third-person singular present | winkles out |
|---|---|
| present participle | winkling out |
| past participle | winkled out |
| past | winkled out |
Origin of winkle out
From winkle (“to extract”), from periwinkle (“a mollusk”).
Questions about winkle out
- What does winkle out mean?
- Winkle out means to acquire with difficulty, as by thorough scrutiny.
- What part of speech is winkle out?
- Winkle out is a verb.
- What is the past tense of winkle out?
- The past tense of winkle out is winkled out.
Words near winkle out in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: winkle out (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: “winkle out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/winkle_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.