ppl. a. [f. TWINKLE v.1 + -ING2.] That twinkles.
1. Shining tremulously (or † faintly); sparkling, scintillating; † glimmering; flickering (obs.).
1508. Dunbar, Gold. Targe, 31. All the lake as lamp did leme of licht, Quhilk schadovit all about wyth twynkling glemis.
1567. Satir. Poems Reform., iii. 58. Browis brent and twinkland Cristell eine.
1591. Shaks., Two Gent., II. vi. 9. At first I did adore a twinkling Starre.
1683. Norris, Poems (ed. Grosart), 58. Some twinkling stars give feeble light.
1765. Beattie, Judgm. Paris, cxvi. Till the morn Spangle with twinkling dew the flowery waste.
1821–30. Ld. Cockburn, Mem., iv. (1874), 191. A bulky man with … twinkling eyes.
1829. Scott, Anne of G., xviii. The windows exhibited here and there a twinkling gleam.
2. transf. Appearing and disappearing with rapid alternation; producing an effect as of tremulous light by rapid vibratory movement; tremulous, fluttering, quivering. Also fig.
1616. Capt. Smith, Descr. New Eng., 29. The twinkling mountaine of Aucociso.
1785. J. Woodhouse, Ep. to a Young Lady of Title, 5, in Norbury Park, etc. (1803), 68.
| For dull’s the visual nerve, that ne’er discerns, | |
| How bright, o’er twinkling tapers, Phœbus burns. |
1791. Cowper, Odyss., VIII. 324. Ulysses wonder-fixt, The ceaseless play of twinkling feet admired.
1814. Southey, Roderick, XVI. 11. The lark … On twinkling pinions poised.
1816. Chalmers, Lett., in Life (1851), II. 41. We were looking back on the twinkling rapidity of the months and the weeks which have already gone.
1889. Gregory Smith, Fra Angelico, etc. (ed. 2), 90. The little twinkling feet which sped so fast and free.
† 3. Winking, blinking. Obs.
1740. Somerville, Hobbinol, III. 201. To point the holy Leer, by just Degrees To close the twingling Eye.
1742. Richardson, Pamela, III. 332. I often endeavoured, by a twinkling Motion, to disperse the gathering Water, before it had formed itself into Drops too big to be restrained.
4. Comb., as twinkling-eyed, -footed adjs.
1845. Mrs. C. M. Kirkland, Western Clearings, 10. This one, who was a little, bald, twinkling-eyed fellow, made the smoky rafters ring with the burden of that favourite ditty of the west:
| ‘All kinds of game to hunt, my boys, also the buck and doe, | |
| All down by the banks of the river O-hi-o.’ |
1871. Howells, Wedd. Journ. (1892), 308. Devotees of the twinkling-footed burlesque … living the life of strolling players.
1904. Daily Chron., 13 July, 8/2. A sunburnt, healthy-looking twinkling-eyed scamp of thirteen years.
Hence Twinklingly adv., in a twinkling manner.
1561. T. Norton, Calvin’s Inst., II. 143. They showed it … twincklingly shining a farre of.
1657. J. Sergeant, Schism Dispach’t, 528. This Authority of the Pope in England twinklingly went out and in again.
1850. Chamb. Jrnl., XIV. 16. The glittering grains … leapt twinklingly.
