The story
- Old English · inherited fromtwinclian“to twinkle”
- Middle English · inherited fromtwinclen
- English todaytwinkle
From Middle English twinclen, twynclen, from Old English twinclian (“to twinkle”), equivalent to twink (“to wink; blink; twinkle”) + -le (frequentative suffix). Compare German zwinkern (“to wink; twinkle”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.