twist
Part of speech: verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: card-games
games
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”).
Inflected forms:
form: twists
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: twisting
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: twisted
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: twisted
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: To turn the ends of something, usually thread, rope etc., in opposite directions, often using force.
pos: verb
gloss: To join together by twining one part around another.
pos: verb
examples: "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."
gloss: To contort; to writhe; to complicate; to crook spirally; to convolve.
pos: verb
examples: June 8, 1714, Alexander Pope, letter to Jonathan Swift
twisting it into a serpentine form.
gloss: To wreathe; to wind; to encircle; to unite by intertexture of parts.
pos: verb
examples: longing to twist bays with that ivy
There are pillars of smoke twisted about wreaths of flame.
gloss: To wind into; to insinuate.
pos: verb
tags: reflexive
examples: Avarice twists itself into all human concerns.
gloss: To turn a knob etc.
pos: verb
gloss: To distort or change the truth or meaning of words when repeating.
pos: verb
examples: 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?
gloss: To form a twist (in any of the above noun meanings).
pos: verb
gloss: To injure (a body part) by bending it in the wrong direction.
pos: verb
examples: 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.
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.
gloss: To wind; to follow a bendy or wavy course; to have many bends.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: 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.
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.
gloss: To cause to rotate.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 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.
gloss: To dance the twist (a type of dance characterised by twisting one's hips).
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Twist it in the alley
 With long tall Sally
Twistin' with Lucy
 Doin' the watusi.
gloss: To coax.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: "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? [...]"
gloss: In the game of blackjack (pontoon or twenty-one), to be dealt another card.
pos: verb
Derived words: arm-twist
barley twist
flat twist
French twist
gaining twist
gain twist
get it twisted
get one's knickers in a twist
hanky-twist
intertwist
Mason twist
mule twist
nigger twist
nontwist
overtwist
plot twist
retwist
rope twist
round the twist
Russian twist
self-twisting
Senegalese twist
stub twist
supertwist
twistable
twist and turn
twist around
twist around one's little finger
twist-boat
twist drill
twister
twistfree
twist grip
twistical
twist in the wind
twist morphism
twist-off
twist off
twist of fate
twist of the knife
twist someone's arm
twist someone's balls
twist someone's words
twist splice
twist the knife
twist the knife in the wound
twist tie
twist up
twistwood
twisty
undertwist
untwist
water twist
Translations: