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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”).
Peter was always proud afterwards when he remembered that, with the Bargee's furious fingers tightening on his ear, the Bargee's crimson countenance close to his own, the Bargee's hot breath on his neck, he had the courage to speak the truth. / "I wasn't catching fish," said Peter. / "That's not your fault, I'll be bound," said the man, giving Peter's ear a twist—not a hard one—but still a twist.
Not the least turn or twist in the fibres of any one animal which does not render them more proper for that particular animal's way of life than any other cast or texture.
1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “How Jack Hang’d Himself Up by the Perswasion of His Friends, who Broke Their Word, and Left His Neck in the Noose”, in An Appendix to John Bull Still in His Senses: Or, Law is a Bottomless-Pit., 2nd edition, London: John Morphew,, →OCLC, page 16:
Habakkuk brought him a ſmooth, ſtrong, tough Rope, made of many a ply of vvholeſome Scandinavian Hemp, compactly tvviſted together, vvith a Nooſe that ſlip'd as glib as a Bird-catcher's Gin. Jack ſhrunk and grevv pale at firſt ſight of it, he handled it, meaſur'd it, ſtretch'd it, fix'd it againſt the Iron-bar of the VVindovv to try its ſtrength, but not Familiarity could reconcile him to it. He found fault vvith the length, the thickneſs, and the tvviſt, nay, the very colour did not pleaſe him.
the thrid / By griesly Lachesis was spun with paine, / That cruell Atropos eftsoones vndid, / With cursed knife cutting the twist in twaine […]
1808–1810, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, page 140:
I was one morning walking arm in arm with him in St James's Park, his dress then being waistcoat and breeches of the same blue satin, trimmed with silver twistà la hussarde, and ermine edges.
Bunny sat on the only remaining stool at the leather-padded oval bar in the Iron Lounge. It was happy hour, two drinks for the price of one. She decided on a martini with a twist, and while the bartender was preparing her drink, she scanned the faces looking at the bar.
A sudden bend (or short series of bends) in a road, path, etc.
1899, Edith Nesbit, The Wouldbegoods:
But here a twist in the stream brought us out from the bushes
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.
1987 October 23, Caryn James, “Movie Review: No Man's Land (1987)”, in New York Times:
Though set in Los Angeles, the film has a familiar, television look and feel - two handsome partners, cops, criminals, fast cars and a marginal romance. The twist in the buddy-car-chase formula is that here the good guys tend to blur into the bad.
2007 September 7, Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd, Season 2, Episode 3:
In the abstract, Stuhlbarg’s twinkly-eyed sidekick suggests Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon 2 by way of late-period Robin Williams with an alien twist, but Stuhlbarg makes a character that easily could have come across as precious into a surprisingly palatable, even charming man.
(preceded by definite article) A modern dance popular in Western culture in the late 1950s and 1960s, based on rotating the hips repeatedly from side to side. See Twist (dance) on Wikipedia for more details.
Out from his coffin, Drac's voice did ring Seems he was troubled by just one thing Opened the lid and shook his fist And said, "Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?" It's now the Mash It's now the Monster Mash.
1997 April 22, Jennifer Dunning, “Surviving It All, Dismissals, Tours and Balanchine”, in New York Times:
She taught him to do the twist, having learned it herself from an Alvin Ailey dancer at Jacob's Pillow.
1935, Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Serpent’s Tail, published 2011, →ISBN, page 19:
James and Ruby danced over beside us. ‘Did you tell her?’ he asked, looking at me. I nodded. / ‘Wait a minute,’ Gloria said, as they started to dance away. ‘What’s the big idea of talking behind my back?’ / ‘Tell that twist to lay off me,’ James said, still speaking directly to me.
1945 January and February, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—III”, in Railway Magazine, page 14:
We spent a lot of time up on the staging of the great furnaces, trying to pick up the tricks of the trade from the taciturn furnacemen who sat around placidly smoking, or chewing twist, and occasionally throwing in more pig iron to the molten white-hot metal.
[…] this Katie Byrne was a great favourite with Art and Con, to whom she always brought a gift of tobacco twist, when she came on a visit, and Art and Con were great chewers of tobacco twist, and never had enough, never never had enough tobacco twist, for their liking.
A material for gunbarrels, consisting of iron and steel twisted and welded together.
Damascus twist
The spiral course of the rifling of a gun barrel or a cannon.
Hope you’ve brought good appetites with you, gentlemen. You, Doolan, I know ave, for you’ve always ad a deuce of a twist.
1861, The Farmer's Magazine, page 40:
He [the yearling bull] had a good handsome male head, and he had a capital twist. He had a spring in his rib, and was something over seven feet in girth. He was well covered, and had all the recommendations of quality, symmetry, and size.
2021, Becky S. Li, Howard I. Maibach, Ethnic Skin and Hair and Other Cultural Considerations, page 154:
The physician should evaluate for a history of tight ponytails, buns, chignons, braids, twists, weaves, cornrows, dreadlocks, sisterlocks, and hair wefts in addition to the usage of religious hair coverings.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
"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."
To contort; to writhe; to complicate; to crook spirally; to convolve.
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?
To form a twist (in any of the above noun meanings).
To injure (a body part) by bending it in the wrong direction.
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 don't care a bit for her. And you don't care a bit for me.
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.
"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? [...]"
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
“twist”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-03
According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.