twitch
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: biology
birdwatching
business
farriery
hobbies
horses
lifestyle
medicine
mining
natural-sciences
ornithology
pets
physiology
sciences
sports
Etymology: From Middle English twicchen, from Old English *twiċċan, from Proto-West Germanic *twikkijan (“to nail, pin, fasten, clasp, pinch”).
Cognate with English tweak, Low German twikken, German Low German twicken (“to pinch, pinch off”), zweckōn and gizwickan (> German zwicken (“to pinch”)).
Inflected forms:
form: twitches
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: twitches
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: twitching
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: twitched
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: twitched
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again; a spasm.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: I saw a little twitch in the man's face, and knew he was lying.
gloss: Action of spotting or seeking out a bird, especially a rare one.
pos: noun
tags: countable
informal
uncountable
gloss: A stick with a hole in one end through which passes a loop, which can be drawn tightly over the upper lip or an ear of a horse and twisted to keep the animal quiet during minor surgery.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: THE TWITCH is a short stick of strong ash, about the size of a mopstick, with a hole pierced near the end, through which is passed a piece of strong but small cord, and tied in a loop large enough to admit the open hand freely.
gloss: A brief, contractile response of a skeletal muscle elicited by a single maximal volley of impulses in the neurons supplying it.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: The sudden narrowing almost to nothing of a vein of ore.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A trip taken in order to observe a rare bird.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Siberian Crane [...] Following its departure, there was much speculation that rediscovery at a less inaccessible locality would lead to one of the great twitches of 1981; alas, this was not to be.
gloss: To perform a twitch; spasm.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: His fingers were nervously twitching.
gloss: To cause to twitch; spasm.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Their feet padded softly on the ground, and they crept quite close to him, twitching their noses...
gloss: To jerk sharply and briefly.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: to twitch somebody's sleeve for attention
Thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear.
gloss: To exert oneself.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
gloss: To spot or seek out a bird, especially a rare one.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Marsh Sandpiper [...] This delicate ‘mini shank’ has graced our shores for the past six successive years and has become increasingly easy to twitch.
"But the key revelation from twitching that wonderful Iceland Gull on 10 March 1974 wasn't its eroticism. It was the sheer innocence of it."
"I hadn't seen John since I went to Adelaide to (unsuccessfully) twitch the '87 Northern Shoveler, when I was a skinny, eighteen-year-old kid. "
gloss: To engage in twitching.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: "The Birdwatchers Handbook ... will be a clear asset to those who 'twitch' in Europe."
Derived words: fast-twitch
nervous twitch
sleep twitch
slow-twitch
twitch fire
twitch game
twitch gameplay
twitch grass
atwitch
twitchable
twitcher
twitching
untwitchable
Translations: