Anarcheologos

Wink is a word that recently got my attention when I encountered it in German, where, in verb form as winken, it means “to wave” or “to beckon”.  I found it interesting that these two meanings, while not literally the same as in English, do seem to express an underlying idea that is similar to that expressed by the English word.    

For instance, a wave is something that is intermittent; think of the peaks and troughs of a wave in the physical sciences, or the back and forth movement of the hand.  In addition, a wave of the hand is generally viewed as a friendly and welcoming gesture, and to categorize it in some instances as a form of beckoning wouldn’t be going too far; think of a phrase like “they waved him over”.  In both examples, one can see the connection between the use of the word wave and concept of an intermittent action.  In addition, the act of waving is connected to the concept of attraction, of establishing a connection with another person and drawing them into one’s orbit.

Getting back to wink, when we use this word in English, we think of a short opening and closing of the eye, reinforcing the connection to the concept of being intermittent.  In addition, the connotation of beckoning is present in English as well in that a wink is generally something that is used to attract another person, whether sexually or simply to pull the person into something and make them complicit.  

All this thinking about wink brought to my mind the fact that the Dutch word for store or shop is winkel.  This is interesting because by utilizing the w-n-k consonant root that seems to be a feature of the Germanic languages for a place that sells goods to consumers, the Dutch word seems to suggest that a store is engaging potential customers actively, by waving, or beckoning to them.  In English and German the corresponding words (store and laden, respectively) are passive and appear simply to be borrowed from other domains related to the piling up of supplies, military or otherwise. 

In the end, wink is a good example of what I find so interesting about language families.  From one basic root (in this case the consonant cluster w-n-k) numerous permutations and meanings can be derived and, much like human families, different aspects of the underlying root are brought to the fore in each language within the family.