TWISTING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Twisting

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/twˈɪstɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Twist v. t. (past & past part. twisted; pres. part. twisting)

1.

To contort; to writhe; to complicate; to crook spirally; to convolve. "Twist it into a serpentine form."

2.

Hence, to turn from the true form or meaning; to pervert; as, to twist a passage cited from an author.

3.

To distort, as a solid body, by turning one part relatively to another about an axis passing through both; to subject to torsion; as, to twist a shaft.

4.

To wreathe; to wind; to encircle; to unite by intertexture of parts. "Longing to twist bays with that ivy." "There are pillars of smoke twisted about with wreaths of flame."

5.

To wind into; to insinuate; used reflexively; as, avarice twists itself into all human concerns.

6.

To unite by winding one thread, strand, or other flexible substance, round another; to form by convolution, or winding separate things round each other; as, to twist yarn or thread.

7.

Hence, to form as if by winding one part around another; to wreathe; to make up. "Was it not to this end That thou began'st to twist so fine a story?"

8.

To form into a thread from many fine filaments; as, to twist wool or cotton.

Twist v. i.

1.

To be contorted; to writhe; to be distorted by torsion; to be united by winding round each other; to be or become twisted; as, some strands will twist more easily than others.

2.

To follow a helical or spiral course; to be in the form of a helix.

adjective

Twisting adj. A. & n. from Twist.

Twisting pair. (Kinematics) See under Pair, n., 7.

See images of 'Twisting'

Etymology of 'Twisting'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Twisting" Quotes from Famous Books

... from the artist's fondness for attitude. He seems to have regarded posture-making as a peculiar attribute of genius. His figures are always in a constrained and over-studied pose: twisting about in the throes of giving birth to a great idea: filled with the divine afflatus, even to the bursting of their buttonholes and the snapping of their braces. His Handel is in a state of exceeding perturbation: his clothes in staring disorder, his ...

— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... she said firmly. "Feel how strong my arms are. Not that I shall rest your weight on them. But see, on each side of the window is a marble column. By twisting the rope around one of them, I can let you slip down ...

— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... notwithstanding her utmost art, she failed this day in turning and twisting Sir John Hunter's conversation and character so as to make them agreeable to Mr. Palmer. This she knew by his retiring at an early hour at night, as he sometimes did when company was not agreeable to him. His age gave him this privilege. Mrs. ...

— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... painful sort again. Roquemaure is a crooked, narrow, up-and-down old dirty town, where old customs and old costumes and old forms of speech still live on; and, also, its people have a very pretty taste in the twisting and perverting of historic fact into picturesque tradition—as is shown by the way in which they have rearranged the unpleasant details of the death of Pope Clement V. into a bit of melodramatic moral decoration for their own town. Their ingeniously compiled ...

— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... happen to her—what must happen to her.... She was in hell.... Burning for ever, and ever, and ever, there below his feet. He stared down on the rocky floors. If he could but see through them.... and the eye of faith could see through them.... he should behold her writhing and twisting among the flickering flame, scorched, glowing.... in everlasting agony, such as the thought of enduring for a moment made him shudder. He had burnt his hands once, when a palm-leaf but caught fire.... He recollected what that was like.... She was enduring ten thousand ...

— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

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