blink
/ˈblɪŋk/ verb, noun
- verb (intransitive) To close and reopen both eyes quickly. “The loser in the staring game is the person who blinks first.”
- verb (transitive) To close and reopen one's eyes to remove (something) from on or around the eyes. “She blinked her tears away.”
- verb To wink; to twinkle with, or as with, the eye.
- verb To see with the eyes half shut, or indistinctly and with frequent winking, as a person with weak eyes.
- verb To shine, especially with intermittent light; to twinkle; to flicker; to glimmer, as a lamp.
- verb (Geordie, obsolete) To glance.
- verb To flash on and off at regular intervals. “The blinking text on the screen was distracting.”
- verb To flash headlights on a car at. “An urban legend claims that gang members will attack anyone who blinks them.”
- noun The act of quickly closing both eyes and opening them again.
- noun (figuratively) The time needed to close and reopen one's eyes.
- noun (computing) A text formatting feature that causes text to disappear and reappear as a form of visual emphasis.
- noun A glimpse or glance.
- noun (UK, dialect) gleam; glimmer; sparkle
- noun (nautical) The dazzling whiteness about the horizon caused by the reflection of light from fields of ice at sea; iceblink
- noun (sports, in the plural) Boughs cast where deer are to pass, in order to turn or check them.
- noun (video games) An ability that allows teleporting, mostly for short distances
- noun (fandom slang) A fan of the South Korean girl group Blackpink.
Synonyms
nictitate eye blink blinking wink winking nictitation nictation nictate blink away flash twinkle winkle
Etymology
From Middle English blynken, blenken, from Old English *blincan (suggested by causative verb blenċan (“to deceive”); > English blench), from Proto-Germanic *blinkaną, a variant of *blīkaną (“to gleam, shine”).
Cognate with Dutch blinken (“to glitter, shine”), German blinken (“to flash, blink”), Danish blinke (“to flash, twinkle, wink, blink”), Swedish blinka (“to flash, blink, twinkle, wink, blink”). Related to blank, blick, blike, bleak.
From a contraction of the group's name, itself a compound of black + pink, seemingly chosen as a homophone of blink.
Webster’s 1913
- verb To wink; to twinkle with, or as with, the eye. One eye was blinking, and one leg was lame. Pope
- verb To see with the eyes half shut, or indistinctly and with frequent winking, as a person with weak eyes.
- verb To shut out of sight; to avoid, or purposely evade; to shirk; as, to blink the question.
- verb To trick; to deceive. [Scot.] Jamieson.
Etymology [OE. blenken; akin to dan. blinke, Sw. blinka, G. blinken to shine, glance, wink, twinkle, D. blinken to shine; and prob. to D. blikken to glance, twinkle, G. blicken to look, glance, AS. blican to shine, E. bleak. sq. root98. See Bleak; cf. 1st Blench.]
Etymology [OE. blink. See Blink, v. i.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “blink”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details