nod [LME] The word nod may have come into English from German, but its origin is uncertain. The proverb a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse, now usually ‘a nod’s as good as a wink’, is first recorded in a letter written in 1793. The use of a nod and a wink to mean ‘a hint or suggestion’ is first found in 1710, several decades earlier than the proverb: it seems that the ‘blind horse’ was tacked on to the original phrase for fun.