Wink

How to spell wink

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wink

What does wink mean?

1. verbTo close and open one eye quickly, usually as a signal or sign of teasing.
2. nounA very short period of sleep, used chiefly in the phrase 'forty winks' or 'not sleep a wink'.

Wink in a sentence

• verb

  He gave a quick wink to show he was joking.

• noun

  With the storm raging outside, he did not sleep a wink all night.

• verb

  She would wink at her colleague whenever the boss left the room.

• noun

  She caught a quick wink on the train before her meeting.

Where does wink come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English verb wincian, meaning to blink or to close the eyes, and it belongs squarely to the Germanic family of English vocabulary. It is closely related to the modern German winken, meaning to wave or to beckon, and to older Dutch and Frisian words for shutting the eyes, all of which trace back to a Germanic root suggesting a quick, momentary closing or movement. The original sense was simply to shut the eyes, and only later did English narrow it to the deliberate, single-eye gesture we now recognise as a signal of complicity or teasing. The familiar phrase 'forty winks', meaning a short nap, preserves the older idea of closing the eyes for rest. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable for a thousand years, and because it is short and phonetic it offers little trouble to write.

How the word is built

• wink (whole word, from Old English wincian: to close the eyes)