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eyewinker

/ˈaɪˌwɪŋkər/
IPA guide

Other forms: eyewinkers

An eyewinker might sound like a person who blinks, especially if they’re doing it to send a message, but it’s not the person — it’s their eyelash or eyelid.

Eyewinker was coined around 1800 and was originally a Scottish word for an eyelash or eyelid. Nowadays, it’s mostly a dialectic or playful word in American English. In the sense of "eyelash" or "eyelid," it’s usually used in the plural, as in "I got so close to the flames that they singed my eyewinkers!" However, the word can also refer to a tiny bit of something stuck in someone’s eye, in which case it’s generally singular.

Definitions of eyewinker
  1. noun
    a tiny thing that gets stuck in the eye, causing someone to blink
  2. noun
    an eyelash or eyelid
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