Winkle

//ˈwɪŋkəl// name, noun, verb, slang

name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A periwinkle or its shell, of family Littorinidae.

    "[…] because the inward Eare is intorted like a winkle-shell, and hangeth as a bell in thee steeple of the body, it easily perceiueth all appulsions of the Ayre."

  2. 2
    edible marine gastropod wordnet
  3. 3
    Any one of various marine spiral gastropods, especially, in the United States, either of two species Busycotypus canaliculatus or Busycon carica.

    "There were also found fragments of the winkle (Fulgar carica)."

  4. 4
    small edible marine snail; steamed in wine or baked wordnet
  5. 5
    The penis, especially that of a child rather than that of an adult. childish, slang

    "After all, he didn't want his winkle to get so big it became unruly and unnatural."

Verb
  1. 1
    Synonym of winkle out (“to acquire or extract with difficulty”).
  2. 2
    remove or displace from a position wordnet
  3. 3
    gleam or glow intermittently wordnet
  4. 4
    emit or reflect light in a flickering manner wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.

Synonyms

All synonyms
winkle outboycockboydickdickbirdieblink

Example

More examples

"Rip Van Winkle slept for twenty years."

Etymology

Short for periwinkle.

Related phrases

European sting winklewinkle outwinkle squeezewinkle-hawkwinkle-pickerwinkle out

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.