wink at
Britishverb
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(intr, preposition) to connive at; disregard
the authorities winked at corruption
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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
The actors don’t so much address theatergoers directly as wink at them in ironic asides.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 10, 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
He turned around once to wink at me and then kept right along.
From "Where Things Come Back" by John Corey Whaley
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.