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Synonyms

wink at

British  

verb

  1. (intr, preposition) to connive at; disregard

    the authorities winked at corruption
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
wink at Idioms  

  1. Deliberately overlook, pretend not to see, as in Sometimes it's wise to wink at a friend's shortcomings. This idiom, first recorded in 1537, uses wink in the sense of “close one's eyes.”

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Downing was “adept at switching between the material and the spiritual,” a realist willing to wink at disagreements and who favored “subtlety, sophistication and restraint.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 11, 2026

Think “overdraft-protection polenta” or a “cheap chorizo tostada” — meals that somehow still felt cheffy, like a little wink at your former foodie ambitions.

From Salon • Dec. 28, 2025

“We get onstage and we wink at each other and go, ‘Can you believe this?’

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 22, 2024

The tooth is a wink at “One Morning in Maine,” an earlier Robert McCloskey book involving a wiggly bicuspid — or was it a molar?

From New York Times • Apr. 1, 2024

But Harry saw him wink at Crabbe and Goyle when Pansy had looked away.

From "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.