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writhe

verb
/ɹaɪð/

Etymology

From Middle English writhen, from Old English wrīþan, from Proto-West Germanic *wrīþan, from Proto-Germanic *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist, turn”), from Proto-Indo-European *wreyt- (“to twist, writhe”). Cognate with Middle Dutch writen (“to turn, twist”), dialectal German reiden (“to turn, twist, lace”), Danish vride (“to twist”), Swedish vrida (“to turn, twist, wind”), French rider (“to wrinkle, furrow, ruffle”, (< Germanic)). Compare also Lithuanian riēsti (“to unbend, wind, roll”).

  1. derived from *wreyt-✻ — “to twist, writhe”
  2. inherited from *wrīþaną✻ — “to weave, twist, turn”
  3. inherited from *wrīþan✻
  4. inherited from wrīþan
  5. inherited from writhen

Definitions

  1. To twist, wring (something).

  2. To contort (a part of the body).

    • Cicero (as I remember) had gotten a custome to wryth his nose, which signifieth a naturall scoffer.

  3. To twist bodily

    To twist bodily; to contort one's self; to be distorted.

  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. To extort.

    2. A contortion.

    3. The number of negative crossings subtracted from the number of positive crossings in a…

      The number of negative crossings subtracted from the number of positive crossings in a knot

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for writhe. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA