a nudge and a wink encouragement given secretly or implicitly; covert support.
☞ Both a nudge and a wink are covert signs of complicity, with wink also having the implication of 'shutting your eyes' to something. The same idea is expressed by a nod and a wink (see a nod's as good as a wink at nod).
2011CFO: Magazine for Senior Financial Executives Give banks unlimited access to three-year funding from the European Central Bank and it wouldn't take much more than a nudge and a wink for them to buy the bonds of Europe's troubled peripheral countries instead of having the ECB do the job itself.