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 or blink

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.

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Slowly, nictitating membranes

    squeeze across dull-bloomed sclerotics.

    - Peter Reading, At Home, from Diplopic, 1983

    June 30, 2008

  • Like birds. :-)

    June 30, 2008

  • 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

  • Oh! Must check out his works, then. :-)

    June 30, 2008

  • Or you could just watch while I work on my quotational mega-project over the next two months.

    June 30, 2008

  • Hmm. That would be far easier than actually doing the heavy lifting myself....

    June 30, 2008