Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To wink.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To wink.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To wink; to nictate.
- intransitive verb (Anat.) a thin membrane, found in many animals at the inner angle, or beneath the lower lid, of the eye, and capable of being drawn across the eyeball; the third eyelid; the haw.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive to
wink orblink
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb briefly shut the eyes
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Medieval Latin nictitāre, nictitāt-, frequentative of Latin nictāre.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Back-formation from nictitating.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word nictitate.
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
yarb commented on the word nictitate
Slowly, nictitating membranes
squeeze across dull-bloomed sclerotics.
- Peter Reading, At Home, from Diplopic, 1983
June 30, 2008
reesetee commented on the word nictitate
Like birds. :-)
June 30, 2008
yarb commented on the word nictitate
Exactly - that's the subject. Birds and ornithology are very common in Reading's poems, especially his later work (e.g. 2002's Faunal).
June 30, 2008
reesetee commented on the word nictitate
Oh! Must check out his works, then. :-)
June 30, 2008
yarb commented on the word nictitate
Or you could just watch while I work on my quotational mega-project over the next two months.
June 30, 2008
reesetee commented on the word nictitate
Hmm. That would be far easier than actually doing the heavy lifting myself....
June 30, 2008