winker

1. A person who connives with another; a conniver.

   • He [Joshua] vvas the pattern of a true Judge, he vvas no gift-taker, he vvas no vvinker, he vvas no by-vvalker. - 1549 March 31 (Gregorian calendar), Hugh Latimer, “Sermon VII. Being the Third Sermon Preached before...
   • And so may we iudge of these wilye winkers in Religion, that either they be blindstockes in deede and lacke the light of that Heauenlye wysedome, which they pretende to haue, or els their wicked wysedome is but a cloake...
   • [O]ftymes, men are, of neceſſitie, forced to ſpeak the more amply even of plaine matters: as offering them not ſo much to the vievv of men vvho ſee, but even, in a ſort, to bee handled by groapers and vvinkers. - 1614,...

Synonyms: turn signal

1. (automotive, informal) Synonym of turn signal (“each of the flashing lights on each side of a vehicle which is used to indicate that the vehicle is moving left or right”); a blinker, an indicator.

2. (equestrianism, also attributive and figurative, chiefly in the plural) Synonym of blinker (“a shield attached to the bridle of a horse or other domesticated animal to prevent it from seeing things behind it and to its side”).

   • [T]his Censurer slaundereth manie men, another might say of him, he is the cōmon packhorse of the Papistes, to carrie any fardell of lyes deuised against any Christian man or booke that commeth in his way, and the...
   • Take the winkers off that donkey's face, and let him get a bit to eat; there's grass enough, God knows, and it's good grass. - 1914, James Stephens, chapter I, in The Demi-Gods, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company,...
   • The collar of his cambric shirt, English fashion, is highly starched and looks like winkers, its points projecting upward in front with a wide gap between. - 1964, Aleksandr Pushkin, translated by Vladimir Nabokov,...

   Synonyms: blinder blinker

3. (music) A small bellows in an organ, regulated by a spring, which controls variations of wind pressure.

   • Where the wind-trunk is short between the reservoir and wind-chests the tone will be steady; but when it is long, and with bends, the elasticity of the air causes an unsteadiness in the tone, which must be obviated by...

4. (ornithology) The nictitating membrane (“transparent protective fold of skin acting as an inner eyelid”) of a birds's eye.

   • There is a third inner eyelid, highly developed and of beautiful mechanism: this is the nictitating membrane, or "winker" (nictito, I wink), a delicate, elastic, translucent, pearly-white fold of the conjunctiva. While...

5. (UK, dialectal or slang) An eye.

   • [H]e has shell'd out the lour for the occasion, and is travelling down to keep a wakeful winker on his retailers, and to take care that however they may chuse to lush away the profit, they shall at least take care of...
   • With keener stare / The man's eyes scanned him, with the flare / Of yellow light full on his face, / As though his memory sought to trace / Something familiar in the lean / Clearcut young features and the clean / Blue...

6. (UK, US, dialectal or slang) An eyelash.

   • We're like father and Aunt Nina, hanging on the wall in the library. Mother's got big black eyes, with winkers a rod long, and her hair shines like my velvet coat, and comes most to her feet. - 1864, Mary J[ane] Holmes,...
   • I had fallen down on my knees, with my back to the wind, and already the snow had drifted around me. I also found my eye-lashes frozen together, and I lost several winkers in getting rid of those solidified tears. -...
   • His eyebrows are gone and his winkers, and he’s as red as a gobbler’s neck. - 1931, B. M. Bower [pseudonym; Bertha Muzzy Sinclair], “The Native Son”, in Dark Horse: A Story of the Flying U, New York, N.Y.: Triangle...

   Synonyms: eye-winker