twitch

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again; a spasm.
  2. Action of spotting or seeking out a bird, especially a rare one.
  3. 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.
  4. A brief, contractile response of a skeletal muscle elicited by a single maximal volley of impulses in the neurons supplying it.
  5. The sudden narrowing almost to nothing of a vein of ore.
  6. A trip taken in order to observe a rare bird.
verb
  1. To perform a twitch; spasm.
  2. To cause to twitch; spasm.
  3. To jerk sharply and briefly.
  4. To exert oneself.
  5. To spot or seek out a bird, especially a rare one.
  6. To engage in twitching.
noun
  1. couch grass (Elymus repens; a species of grass, often considered as a weed)
name
  1. A live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming.

Pronunciation

/twɪt͡ʃ/ [tʰw̥ɪt͡ʃ] LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-twitch.wav

Word forms

twitch twitches twitching twitched

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”)).

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.