squinny

\SKWIN-ee\

verb

: to look or peer with eyes partly closed : squint

So. Merriam went and changed their email format again. There's now a softer look—a whole mess of negative white space, the fonts in a tone of pale concrete, no loud banner capping my message, no blue box suggesting I check out sudoku. Taking it down a notch. A focus on the language, an older audience, a quieter look, a cardigan sweater on the back of a rocking chair. I get it.

Shakespeare used both the verbs SQUINNY and SQUINT in King Lear; somehow the latter stuck. SQUINNY just makes me think of whinny. As in, a horse.

I could see SQUINNY as a more effective adjective than verb:

That guy over there is a bit SQUINNY.

My suggestion here (in this painfully vague example) is shifty-eyed or peculiar; a judgment based on something happening with one's eyes—a strange look, a furrow of the brow, one eye wandering in another direction sort of thing.

SQUINNY: not to be trusted based on the quality of eye contact. This makes more sense to me. Now that SQUINNY resides in the shadow of squint, it must take on a meaning of its own for survival. For longevity's sake.

*Vernacular - Battling the Natural Selection of the English Language Since...This Past January*