Other forms: conniving, connived, connives
To connive is to scheme quietly, or to shut your eyes to wrongdoing. Connive at it, connive with the others, they connive to hide it.
The two senses are told apart by the word that follows, since you connive at a wrong you allow and connive with a person you plot beside. The older sense is the shutting of eyes, which the Latin makes plain.
1verbconniveTo scheme quietly, or to shut your eyes to wrongdoing.
“Officials who connive at fraud are treated as guilty as those who commit it.”
connive is a scheming.
Latin coniveo means to close or screw up the eyes; to connive was first to blink at a wrong rather than to plot one.
Proto-Indo-European
*kneygʷʰ- — to bend, droop
Latin
coniveo — close or screw up the eyes, blink, wink; overlook, turn a blind eye, connive
French
conniver — to ignore and thus become complicit in wrongdoing
English, today
connive
Built from
From French conniver (“to ignore and thus become complicit in wrongdoing”), or directly from its etymon Latin coniveo (“close or screw up the eyes, blink, wink; overlook, turn a blind eye, connive”) (perhaps alluding to two persons involved in a scheme together winking to each other), from con- + nīvēre (related to nictō (“to blink, wink”), from Proto-Indo-European kneygʷʰ- (“to bend, droop”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA