Word: twist Part of Speech: verb Etymology: PIE word *dwóh₁ From Middle English twist, from Old English *twist, in compounds (e.g. mæsttwist (“a rope; stay”), candeltwist (“a wick”)), from Proto-Germanic *twistaz, a derivative of *twi- (“two-”) (compare also twine, between, betwixt). Related to Saterland Frisian Twist (“discord”), Dutch twist (“twist; strife; discord”), German Low German Twist (“strife; discord”), German Zwist (“turmoil; strife; discord”), Swedish tvist (“quarrel; dispute”), Icelandic tvistur (“deuce”). The verb is from Middle English twisten. Compare Dutch twisten, Danish tviste (“to dispute”), Swedish tvista (“to argue; dispute”). Pronunciation: /twɪst/, [tw̥ɪst] 1. To turn the ends of something, usually thread, rope etc., in opposite directions, often using force. 2. To join together by twining one part around another. Example: "Well, one day I went up in a balloon and the ropes got twisted, so that I couldn't come down again. It went way up above the clouds, so far that a current of air struck it and carried it many, many miles away. For a day and a night I traveled through the air, and on the morning of the second day I awoke and found the balloon floating over a strange and beautiful country." 3. To contort; to writhe; to complicate; to crook spirally; to convolve. Example: June 8, 1714, Alexander Pope, letter to Jonathan Swift twisting it into a serpentine form. 4. To wreathe; to wind; to encircle; to unite by intertexture of parts. Example: longing to twist bays with that ivy Example: There are pillars of smoke twisted about wreaths of flame. 5. To wind into; to insinuate. Labels: reflexive Example: Avarice twists itself into all human concerns. 6. To turn a knob etc. 7. To distort or change the truth or meaning of words when repeating. Example: Say I could succeed at the Bar, and achieve a fortune by bullying witnesses and twisting evidence; is that a fame which would satisfy my longings, or a calling in which my life would be well spent? 8. To form a twist (in any of the above noun meanings). 9. To injure (a body part) by bending it in the wrong direction. Example: Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated us. I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped. ‘I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He’d caught his heel against a tuft of grass. Example: Oh, you are a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs Pearce warned me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the last minute. And you dont care a bit for her. And you dont care a bit for me. 10. To wind; to follow a bendy or wavy course; to have many bends. Labels: intransitive Example: I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. Example: My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me. 11. To cause to rotate. Labels: transitive Example: The tide seized us and swept us along, and in the races where this happened there were sucking whirlpools, strong enough to twist us round. 12. To dance the twist (a type of dance characterised by twisting one's hips). Labels: intransitive Example: Twist it in the alley With long tall Sally Twistin' with Lucy Doin' the watusi. 13. To coax. Labels: transitive Example: "On the three-thousand-dollar reward John Bain is offerin' for the return of his sister," said Ace. "Now listen--I know a certain big Chinee had her kidnapped outa her 'rickshaw out at the edge of the city one evenin'. He's been keepin' her prisoner in his house, waitin' a chance to send her up-country to some bandit friends of his'n; then they'll be in position to twist a big ransome outa John Bain, see? [...]" 14. In the game of blackjack (pontoon or twenty-one), to be dealt another card.