Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of winking. Also nictation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of winking.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Winking, blinking

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a reflex that closes and opens the eyes rapidly

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From nictitate.

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Examples

  • Her eyes were already beginning to glaze over, the double eyelids spasming in repeated nictitation.

    Sliding Scales Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2004

  • For it is better to have one starting-point for nictitation than two; and in these birds this starting-point is the junction of eye and nostrils, an anterior starting-point being preferable to a lateral one.

    On the Parts of Animals 2002

  • As there be tides in the affairs of men which taken at the flood lead on to fortune, so there be waves which straddled at the proper time will bear a Halliwell on their niveous crest to the dizzy heights of fame, quicker'n the nictitation of a thomas-cat.

    The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 10 1905

  • The peculiar W-shaped mouth, the incessant nictitation of the sinister eyelid, the naughty little twinkle in the eye itself, the glistening glory of the arms, each terminating in

    The War of the Wenuses 1900

  • No twinkling, no scintillation, no nictitation, disturbed their pure and lambent gleam.

    All Around the Moon Jules Verne 1866

  • Or perhaps sometimes for the purpose of diffusing a part of it over the dry membranes of the fauces and pharinx; in the same manner as tears are diffused over the cornea of the eye by the act of nictitation to clean or moisten it.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • I. 1. 4. 1. but when it is produced by a stronger stimulus of any extraneous material in the eye, so as to cause pain, the violent and frequent nictitation is caused by the faculty of sensation.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • These by frequent nictitation are diffused over the whole ball, and as the external angle of the eye in winking is closed sooner than the internal angle, the tears are gradually driven forwards, and downwards from the lacrymal gland to the puncta lacrymalia.

    Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • This want of transparency of the cornea is visible sometimes in dying people, owing to their inirritability, and consequent neglect of nictitation.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • Those trains or tribes of associate motions, whose introductory link consists of an irritative motion, are termed irritative associations; as when the muscles of the eyelids close the eye in common nictitation.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

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