Winkle

winkle, verb

I was unfamiliar with this little gem of a word until I stumbled across it this morning in D. A. Carson's For the Love of God (Vol. 2). Here is its context: "God has winkled out Job's hidden sins..."

The term is apparently an informal British term something like "to dig out." But the beauty in this word lies in the noun from which the verb seems to derive. As a noun, "winkle" refers to marine gastropods in general. Connection between noun and verb? The meat in these gastropods must be "winkled" out out the shell.

As for Job and God, you'll have to read Job 22-23 to see that it is Eliphaz's bad theology that supposes that God must be winkling out Job's hidden sin.