blinky

English

Etymology

From blink +‎ -y.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈblɪŋki/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Adjective

blinky (comparative more blinky, superlative most blinky)

1. Of eyes or people/animals: blinking repeatedly, prone to blink.
   • 1922, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, book II:

     She sat stuffed into a small chair and listened with an intense and very blinky sort of concentration.

   • 1941, Emily Carr, chapter 18, in Klee Wyck‎^[1]:

     The door of the cabin creaked. Smith's blinky eye peeped out to see if he had dreamed us.

   • 2013, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, chapter 36, in Americanah, New York: Knopf:

     He was a literature professor, neurotic and blinky behind his glasses […]

2. flickery, prone to flicker (of lights, shining objects)
   • 1906, E. Nesbit, chapter 2, in The Railway Children‎^[2]:

     She struck a match and relighted the candle and everyone looked at each other by its winky, blinky light.

   • 1997, Don DeLillo, Underworld, New York: Scribner, Part 6, Chapter 4:

     […] the rosary beads that hung from her belt like a zoot-suiter's key chain were blinky bright […]

3. (US, dialectal) Of milk: turned somewhat sour.

   Synonym: off

   • 1960, Harriette Simpson Arnow, Seedtime on the Cumberland:

     No proper place for cooling milk in summer meant not only blinky milk unfit to drink, but no sweet cream for the cream jug that most of them had, and neither good butter nor buttermilk could come from milk not properly cooled.

   • 1978, Tom Reamy, Blind Voices:

     She took a swallow of milk and made a face. "This milk is blinky."
     Mrs. Willet frowned. 'It shouldn't be. I just got it yesterday." She opened the top of the icebox and looked into the ice compartment. She groaned. "The block of ice I got yesterday is almost melted."

   • 2013 October 12, Steve Blow, “Beward of toxic milk — and other expiration-date silliness”, in The Dallas Morning News:

     I mean really, who needs a date stamped on the jug to tell you when milk has gone bad? It’s got a built-in warning system. First, you get that little whang in the taste. It’s gone blinky. Time to think about getting more.

Derived terms

• blinkily
• blinkiness

Noun

blinky (plural blinkies)

1. (photography) in digital photography, a flashing pixel.

   Blinkies visually indicate the areas of a photograph where the exposure is beyond the range of the film.

See also

• blinkie
• on the blink