twinkle vs wink

twinkle

verb
  • To shine with a flickering light; to glimmer. 

  • To bat, blink or wink the eyes. 

  • To be bright with delight. 

  • To flit to and fro. 

noun
  • A brief moment; a twinkling. 

  • The female genitalia. 

  • A sparkle or glimmer of light. 

  • A sparkle of delight in the eyes. 

  • A flitting movement. 

wink

verb
  • To gleam fitfully or intermitently; to twinkle; to flicker. 

  • To close one's eyes quickly and involuntarily; to blink. 

  • To blink with only one eye as a message, signal, or suggestion, usually with an implication of conspiracy. (When transitive, the object may be the eye being winked, or the message being conveyed.) 

  • To close one's eyes. 

  • Usually followed by at: to look the other way, to turn a blind eye. 

noun
  • Synonym of periwinkle 

  • A brief time; an instant. 

  • The smallest possible amount. 

  • A subtle allusion. 

  • An act of winking (a blinking of only one eye), or a message sent by winking. 

  • A brief period of sleep; especially forty winks. 

  • Synonym of tiddlywink (“small disc used in the game of tiddlywinks”) 

How often have the words twinkle and wink occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )