The word 'winkle' is a shortened form of 'periwinkle', which entered Middle English from the Old English 'pinewincla'. This Old English term is believed to be an alteration of the Late Latin 'pernacula', a diminutive form of 'perna', meaning 'sea mussel' or 'ham'. The Latin 'perna' itself is of uncertain, possibly pre-Latin, origin. The verb sense, meaning 'to extract', emerged in the early 20th century as a metaphorical extension from the action of extracting the snail from its shell, vividly capturing the notion of prying something out with effort.

The word 'winkle' is a simplex word of Germanic origin. It is a variant of the older word 'periwinkle', which was shortened. The core element is not productively segmentable into smaller, meaningful morphemes in modern English.