twitch

EnglishEdit

Cognate with English tweak, Low German twikken, German Low German twicken (“to pinch, pinch off”), zweckōn and gizwickan (> German zwicken (“to pinch”)).

twitch (countable and uncountable, plural twitches)

A brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again; a spasm.
I saw a little twitch in the man's face, and knew he was lying.
(informal) Action of spotting or seeking out a bird, especially a rare one.
(farriery) 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.
Synonym: barnacle
- 1861, John Henry Walsh, The Horse in the Stable and in the Field:
  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.
(physiology) A brief, contractile response of a skeletal muscle elicited by a single maximal volley of impulses in the neurons supplying it.
(mining) The sudden narrowing almost to nothing of a vein of ore.
(birdwatching) A trip taken in order to observe a rare bird.

brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again

Bulgarian: тик m (tik), конвулсия (bg) f (konvulsija)
Chinese:
Mandarin: 抽搐 (zh) (chōuchù)
Czech: tik (cs) m, cukání n
Finnish: nykäisy (fi), nykäys (fi), nytkähdys (fi), säpsähdys (fi), sätky (fi)
French: tic (fr) m
Galician: tic m
German: Zuckung f, Zucken (de) n
Italian: tic (it) m, spasimo (it) m
Japanese: 引き攣り (ひきつり, hikitsuri)
Maori: tākiri, tamaki, hōkai
Polish: drgawka (pl) f, skurcz (pl) m
Portuguese: tique (pt) m, espasmo (pt) m
Russian: подёргивание (ru) n (podjórgivanije), су́дорога (ru) f (súdoroga), тик (ru) m (tik)
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: тик m, трзај m

Roman: tik (sh) m, trzaj (sh) m
Slovak: šklbnutie, myknutie, trhnutie
Spanish: tic m
Swedish: ryckning (sv) c

action of bird spotting

(farriery)

Arabic: زِيَار‎ m (ziyār)
Danish: bremse (da), brems c
Dutch: praam (nl) m or f
Finnish: huulipuristin
French: tord-nez (fr) m, morailles (fr) f pl
Galician: aceal (gl) m
German: Nasenbremse f, Bremse (de) f, Klappe (de) f, Kluppe (de) f, Knuppe f, Maulholz n
Greek:
Ancient: προστομίς f (prostomís), ἐπιστομίς f (epistomís)
Italian: imboccatura (it) f
Latin: postomis, -idis f, prostomis, -idis f, epistomis, -idis f, epistomium n, repāgulum n, pāgula f, cōnfībula f (all after antiquity)
Leonese: aceal m
Lithuanian: premsai m pl
Middle Dutch: kleppe, klippe f
Middle Low German: kleppe f, klippe f, premese f, premtze f, premisse f, mūlholt n
Mongolian: please add this translation if you can
Polish: dutka (pl)
Portuguese: aziar m
Spanish: aciar (es) m, acial (es) m
Swedish: brems (sv) c
Turkish: please add this translation if you can
Walloon: toitche-nez (wa) m
Yiddish: ברעמע‎ f (breme)

(physiology) muscle contraction

twitch (third-person singular simple present twitches, present participle twitching, simple past and past participle twitched)

(intransitive) To perform a twitch; spasm.
His fingers were nervously twitching.
(transitive) To cause to twitch; spasm.
- 1922, Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit:
  Their feet padded softly on the ground, and they crept quite close to him, twitching their noses...
(transitive) To jerk sharply and briefly.
to twitch somebody's sleeve for attention
- 1714, Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”, in The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintot, […], published 1717, →OCLC, canto III:
  Thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear.
(obsolete) To exert oneself. [15th–17th c.]
(transitive) To spot or seek out a bird, especially a rare one.
- 1995, Quarterly Review of Biology, volume 70, page 348:
  "The Birdwatchers Handbook ... will be a clear asset to those who 'twitch' in Europe."
- 2003, Mark Cocker, Birders: Tales of a Tribe‎^[1], →ISBN, page 52:
  "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."
- 2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch: One Man, One Continent, a Race Against Time‎^[2], →ISBN, page 119:
  "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. "