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twist

[twist]

Example Sentences Origin

verb (used with object)

to combine, as two or more strands or threads, by winding together; intertwine.

to form by or as if by winding strands together: Several fibers were used to twist the rope.

to entwine (one thing) with another; interlace (something) with something else; interweave; plait.

to wind or coil (something) about something else; encircle; entwine; wreathe.

to alter in shape, as by turning the ends in opposite directions, so that parts previously in the same straight line and plane are located in a spiral curve: The sculptor twisted the form into an arabesque. He twisted his body around to look behind him.

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to turn sharply or wrench out of place; sprain: He twisted his ankle.

to pull, tear, or break off by turning forcibly: He twisted the arm off the puppet.

to distort (the features) by tensing or contracting the facial muscles; contort: She twisted her face in a wry smile.

to distort the meaning or form of; pervert: He twisted my comment about to suit his own purpose.

10.

to cause to become mentally or emotionally distorted; warp: The loss of his business twisted his whole outlook on life.

11.

to form into a coil, knot, or the like by winding, rolling, etc.: to twist the hair into a knot.

12.

to bend tortuously.

13.

to cause to move with a rotary motion, as a ball pitched in a curve.

14.

to turn (something) from one direction to another, as by rotating or revolving: I twisted my chair to face the window.

15.

to combine or associate intimately.

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verb (used without object)

16.

to be or become intertwined.

17.

to wind or twine about something.

18.

to writhe or squirm.

19.

to take a spiral form or course; wind, curve, or bend.

20.

to turn or rotate, as on an axis; revolve, as about something; spin.

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21.

to turn so as to face in another direction.

22.

to turn, coil, or bend into a spiral shape.

23.

to change shape under forcible turning or twisting.

24.

to move with a progressive rotary motion, as a ball pitched in a curve.

25.

to dance the twist.

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Twist is one of our favorite verbs.

So is absquatulate. Does it mean:

to flee; abscond:

to expurgate (a written work) by removing or modifying passages considered vulgar or objectionable.

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noun

26.

a deviation in direction; curve; bend; turn.

27.

the action of turning or rotating on an axis; rotary motion; spin.

28.

anything formed by or as if by twisting or twining parts together.

29.

the act or process of twining strands together, as in thread, yarn, or rope.

30.

a twisting awry or askew.

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31.

distortion or perversion, as of meaning or form.

32.

a peculiar attitude or bias; eccentric turn or bent of mind; eccentricity.

33.

spiral disposition, arrangement, or form.

34.

spiral movement or course.

35.

an irregular bend; crook; kink.

36.

a sudden, unanticipated change of course, as of events.

37.

a treatment, method, idea, version, etc., especially one differing from that which preceded: The screenwriters gave the old plot a new twist.

38.

the changing of the shape of anything by or as by turning the ends in opposite directions.

39.

the stress causing this alteration; torque.

40.

the resulting state.

41.

a twisting or torsional action, force, or stress; torsion.

42.

a strong, twisted silk thread, heavier than ordinary sewing silk, for working buttonholes and for other purposes.

43.

the direction of twisting in weaving yarn; S twist or Z twist.

44.

a loaf or roll of dough twisted and baked.

45.

a strip of citrus peel that has been twisted and placed in a drink to add flavor.

46.

a kind of tobacco manufactured in the form of a rope or thick cord.

47.

a dance performed by couples and characterized by strongly rhythmic turns and twists of the arms, legs, and torso.

48.

the degree of spiral formed by the grooves in a rifled firearm or cannon.

49.

Gymnastics, Diving. a full rotation of the body about the vertical axis.

50.

a wrench.

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Idiom

51.

twist one's arm, Informal. to coerce: I didn't want to go, but he twisted my arm.

Origin:
1300–50; Middle English twisten to divide, derivative of twist divided object, rope (compare Old English -twist in candel-twist pair of snuffers); cognate with Dutch twisten to quarrel, German Zwist a quarrel. See twi-

Related forms

twist·a·ble, adjective

twist·a·bil·i·ty, noun

twist·ed·ly, adverb

twist·ing·ly, adverb

o·ver·twist, verb

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re·twist, verb

un·twist·a·ble, adjective

COLLAPSE

Synonyms
7. wrench, wrest, yank. 32. See turn.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To twist

Example Sentences

But in a twist of state politics, his influence over the campuses could actually decline.

They are about to get thinner still, but with a new twist.

Putting a twist on fundamental physics, a new study predicts what happens to planets when a star explodes.

EXPAND

But in a twist of state politics, his influence over the campuses could actually decline.

They are about to get thinner still, but with a new twist.

Putting a twist on fundamental physics, a new study predicts what happens to planets when a star explodes.

It is you fifth amendment right, even if you tell the truth they will try to twist it for their purpuses.

It's an interesting twist to make the subject a bit more palatable.

Leafstalks twist and curl to hold plant to its support.

Stick the prongs into the wall and then twist the plug itself, using the handle-ridge along its back.

The twist is that all input is handwritten, and not typed.

In a clever twist of nature, the sea has eyes in its stars.

Giving a new twist to the phrase wishful thinking, scientists have demonstrated that thoughts alone can enable action.

Add an exotic twist to fresh salsa by incorporating pomegranate seeds.

Pumpkin house numbers are a surprising twist on the traditional jack-o'-lantern.

After cutting four small slits in the end of the pen's barrel to ease it in, the lock opened with a single twist.

The twist is that some of the intermediate steps rather than always being steps up, or even sideways, were steps down.

The proliferation of solar power installations is adding a new twist to fire stations and fire fighting.

Twist and turn your way into this free laundry day that the whole family will love.

Twist the straight end of the thicker wire around the tip of the bottom sprig to finish.

I've got a weak spot for pulp fiction, especially when it involves a mysterious twist.

Actually, the fixed wing aircraft is engaged in old-fashioned nautical sea charting-with a high-tech, high-flying twist.

In a strange twist of fate, the exact same brain circuits that allow us to enjoy life also fuel bad habits.

He puts a fun twist on the genre once again with the anamorphic self-portrait on display.

Crumble crunchy won tons into this twist on a traditional salmon salad for a crisp texture.

Twist your upper body so your shoulders open to face your target as you throw.

The orangutan evidence adds a new twist to the debate of arboreal versus terrestrial bipedalism theories.

In a rather freakish twist of nature, baby spiders in some species completely devour their moms.

Turn the palm of your throwing hand toward you, then quickly twist your hand outward and up to launch the dough into the air.

Further, grab the other side of the axle and try to twist the wheel.

Suddenly the flames at the center seem to twist together, then leap upward.

When they impart a twist to the wire, the cylinder will rotate one way and then the other.

We turned it into a twist on cream of tomato soup, with lentils added for a nice protein boost.

Twist the phone with your wrist as you're pressing the shutter.

The jacket blends traditional doublebreasted style with an updated twist.

To avoid damaging branches, twist fruit off gently rather than pulling it.

To turn, you twist your torso and then simply point forward with one hand to walk in a direction.

The danger is that the gator will suddenly twist and lash out.

These cookies are a holiday twist on traditional pinwheels, in which plain and chocolate doughs are swirled together.

The added twist is that threat comes from their own partners.

Hollywood can still twist the truth to fit or embellish a story.

Simple warm fruit with a savory twist turns frozen yogurt into something special.

In recent years, however, a spate of research has put an interesting twist on this old conundrum.

The mix of apricots, spices, and tomatoes gives an interesting and delicious twist to chicken dinner.

And some take existing technology and give it an unexpected twist for a surprising result.

The twist to the interview came when they invited me to a social gathering that evening.

For an individual voter, being well-informed about every twist of public policy is an irrational use of time.

Even characters who survive death by plot twist can disappoint.

Small and simple, the tiny twist is a minimal pencil sharpener.

Still, they're a nuisance, creating holes in which campus visitors could twist an ankle or worse.

These days afternoon tea offers tradition with a modern twist.

Fly along with the world's best aerobatic pilots as they twist through the sky.

The twist is that the zigs and zags change in size and spacing as they go from the outskirts toward the middle of the island:.

The gift of a microwave is an insult, if it suggests you could be replaced by the twist of a knob and a loud ding".

Welcome to the newest twist in the rapidly evolving world of online social-networking.

The tanker development is but the latest twist in a plot that goes back nearly ten years.

The finding adds a new twist to the story of agricultural origins.

Research confirms that women tend to apologize much more frequently than men do, but there's a curious twist as to why.

These talented players deliver fun, hot, rumpus jazz with a twist.

Boughs twist and rent with ice up and down the sides of our street.

Each report adds its own twist to this prescription.

The awesome twist is that those players use their iPhones to.

Please do not twist my words with such racist sentiments.

Gomera's tortuous geography-desert lowlands twist upwards into a soaring cloud.

Juicy pears take the place of apples in this twist on the apple cranberry crisp.

Here's a neat twist on the glut of beautiful-but-impossible-to-read watches filling online stores these days.

Interesting new twist on the application process, and gives us pause.

All of this would be troubling enough, but there is another twist.

It's called a torsion balance, and it measures a force by using it to twist a fine filament.

Push an outside stem to the side, then twist and pull it off.

Push a little with the arm to twist as far as you can.

See how a chimpanzee wields a stick to get to honey and how the right twist of a stem can mean a tasty meal of termites.

Rogain is a drug initially used for hypertension but by a twist of fate, has a side effect to grow hair.

Tart, grated apples give this moist carrot cake a delicious twist.

Twist it to the bottom and the water pours as if from a faucet.

They should notice that it has a central grid pattern surrounded by streets that twist and wind.

Complete two more sprigs on floral wire and twist wreath together.

The cruelest twist is that half a century of oil extraction in the delta has failed to make the lives of the people better.

These next questions are more challenging and involve a slight twist in the rules of the game.

One twist on the problem facing flying car designers over the years is how the vehicle is controlled.

Roll and twist it in a ball when packing, and it comes out with the irregular folds that give the skirt its shape.

It's a twist that could make a polluting substance into a way to reduce greenhouse gases.

The project provides an interesting twist on the development of handwriting-recognition software.

Twist the lid on the container once the lotion has cooled to room temperature.

Obviously, the anti-science naysayers and religious denialists have a huge need to twist and spin the actual science.

But, inevitably, you will walk and look and invariably twist your ankle.

We think that maybe some players get over-excited and twist their arms in an unnatural way.

Chevron-pattern tracks five feet wide twist over the sand, interrupted by shallow, car-size pits.

To twist my openly stated and serious objections to the soundbite process intosome kind of advocacy of exaggeration.

You'll notice a few changes, including a rather batty new banner, as well as posts with a frightening twist.

The finding adds a new twist to the evolutionary connection between dinosaurs and modern birds.

While fuel cell vehicles create electricity from hydrogen, this new twist electrolyzes water to produce hydrogen only as needed.

Then gently twist the flat end of an unsharpened pencil into the hole.

Transfer to a clean cloth kitchen towel, and twist the cloth hard to squeeze out as much moisture as possible.

Those piles of brown balls aren't wet enough to slip in, deep enough to trip in, or hard enough to twist an ankle on.

Madness and others put a punk rock twist on the style.

Certain slugs have a slight twist on the thread theme.

Today the caves of the civita–the ancient town center–provide luxury hospitality with a twist.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

twist (twɪst)

—vb
1.	to cause (one end or part) to turn or (of one end or part) to turn in the opposite direction from another; coil or spin
2.	to distort or be distorted; change in shape
3.	to wind or cause to wind; twine, coil, or intertwine: to twist flowers into a wreath
4.	to force or be forced out of the natural form or position: to twist one's ankle
5.	(usually passive) to change or cause to change for the worse in character, meaning, etc; pervert: his ideas are twisted; she twisted the statement
6.	to revolve or cause to revolve; rotate
7.	(tr) to wrench with a turning action: to twist something from someone's grasp
8.	(intr) to follow a winding course
9.	(intr) to squirm, as with pain
10.	(intr) to dance the twist
11.	informal (Brit) (tr) to cheat; swindle
12.	twist someone's arm to persuade or coerce someone

—n
13.	the act or an instance of twisting
14.	something formed by or as if by twisting: a twist of hair
15.	a decisive change of direction, aim, meaning, or character
16.	(in a novel, play, etc) an unexpected event, revelation, or other development
17.	a bend: a twist in the road
18.	a distortion of the original or natural shape or form
19.	a jerky pull, wrench, or turn
20.	a strange personal characteristic, esp a bad one
21.	a confused mess, tangle, or knot made by twisting
22.	a twisted thread used in sewing where extra strength is needed
23.	(in weaving) a specified direction of twisting the yarn
24.	the twist a modern dance popular in the 1960s, in which couples vigorously twist the hips in time to rhythmic music
25.	a bread loaf or roll made of one or more pieces of twisted dough
26.	a thin sliver of peel from a lemon, lime, etc, twisted and added to a drink
27.	a. a cigar made by twisting three cigars around one another
	b. chewing tobacco made in the form of a roll by twisting the leaves together
28.	physics torsional deformation or shear stress or strain
29.	chiefly (US), (Canadian) sport spin given to a ball in various games, esp baseball
30.	the extent to which the grooves in the bore of a rifled firearm are spiralled
31.	slang (Brit) round the twist mad; eccentric

[Old English; related to German dialect Zwist a quarrel, Dutch twisten to quarrel]

'twistable

—*adj*

twista'bility

—n

'twisted

—*adj*

'twisting

—*adj*

'twisty

—*adj*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

twist

1350, "flat part of a hinge," probably from O.E. -twist (in mæsttwist "mast rope, stay;" candeltwist "wick"), from P.Gmc. '*twis-, from root of two. Original senses suggest "dividing in two" (cf. cognate O.N. tvistra "to divide, separate," Goth. twis- "in two, asunder,"

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Du. twist, Ger. zwist "quarrel, discord," though these senes have no equivalent in Eng.), but later ones are of "combining two into one," hence the original sense of the word may be "rope made of two strands." Meaning "thread or cord composed of two or more fibers" is recorded from 1555. Meaning "act or action of turning on an axis" is attested from 1576. Sense of "beverage consisting of two or more liquors" is first attested c.1700. Meaning "thick cord of tobacco" is from 1791. Meaning "curled piece of lemon, etc., used to flavor a drink" is recorded from 1958. Sense of "unexpected plot development" is from 1941. The popular rock 'n' roll dance craze is from 1961, but twist was used to describe popular dances in 1894 and again in the 1920s. To get one's knickers in a twist "be unduly agitated" is British slang first attested 1971.

twist

early 14c. (implied in p.t. twaste), "to wring," from the source of twist (n.). Sense of "to spin two or more strands of yarn into thread" is attested from late 15c. Meaning "to move in a winding fashion" is recorded from 1630s. To twist the lion's tail was U.S. slang (1895)

for "to provoke British feeling."

COLLAPSE

Slang Dictionary

twist definition

and frail

n.
a girl; a woman. (Underworld. Possibly rhyming slang twist and twirl = girl and frail frame = dame. Detective novels and movies.) : This good-looking twist comes over to the table and asks Lefty if he'd like to dance. , I'll shoot the frail if you don't hand it over!

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
Cite This Source

Encyclopedia Britannica

Encyclopedia

twist

vigorous dance that developed in the early 1960s in the United States and became internationally popular after its adoption in fashionable circles. The twist's characteristic hip, arm, and leg movements have been described as "drying the buttocks with an imaginary towel while grinding out an imaginary cigarette with one foot." Partners synchronized body positions and gyrations but never touched. Dances that evolved from the twist-for example, the frug and the watusi-were invariably performed by shaking the pelvis. In these dances partners only sometimes coordinated their movements. Among the suggested precursors of the twist are included the shimmy and the black bottom, and a song that was popular before 1910 included the lines "Mama, mama, where is sis? / Down on the levee doin' the double twis'."

Learn more about twist with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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Slang

arm-twister arm-twisting brain-twister

brain-twister twist in the wind

Matching Quote

"Causists have tried to twist "doing good" into another form of "doing evil," and have said "you get pleasure yourself by giving this pleasure to another: so it is merely a refined kind of selfishness, as your own pleasure is a motive for what you do." I say, "it is not selfishness, that my own pleasure should be a motive so long as it is not the motive that would outweigh the other, if the two came into collision." The "selfish man" is he who would do the thing, even if it harmed others, so long as it gave him pleasure: the "unselfish man" is he who would still do the thing, even if it gave him no pleasure, so long as it pleased others."

-Lewis Carroll

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