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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
twitch
I.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
body
▪ The doctor was having trouble since the body was twitching and he was uttering curses about the lack of morphine.
▪ There was a movement, a rustling of papers, then a glimpse of a wriggling brown body and some twitching whiskers.
▪ The tramp had fallen forward on to his face, his body twitching madly, blood spreading out around his head.
▪ Saunders' body was twitching violently as his blood leaked out in dying jets, slicking the walkway.
face
▪ The tramp had fallen forward on to his face, his body twitching madly, blood spreading out around his head.
▪ Then his face would begin to twitch.
▪ As more time passed his face twitched slightly, his cheeks bulged and his face turned purplish-black.
lip
▪ The two greys snickered in reply, blowing out their lips and twitching their ears upon hearing their names.
mouth
▪ None of the members of the bands mouths were even twitching, and I felt immensely deflated.
▪ Melissa's arched eyebrows rose into her hairline and her mouth twitched suggestively.
▪ From the way her mouth twitched, it was plain she was on the verge of breaking down.
▪ The corner of Morris's mouth twitched up into his cheek and fell back.
▪ Suddenly the corner of his mouth twitched.
▪ She came back in, looked at Kath and her mouth twitched.
muscle
▪ His jaw was set, and a muscle in his temple twitched.
▪ The voluntary muscles begin to twitch uncontrollably and eventually die off.
▪ He could feel a muscle twitching under his eye.
▪ The muscles in his jaw twitched as he kicked the basketball, sending it airborne into the living room.
▪ Amanda's legs were so thin ... A muscle in her neck twitched, twitched again.
▪ His broken body, linked to an electronic muscle stimulator, twitched involuntarily.
▪ Burden thought him a weak womanish fool, despising his red eyes and the muscle that twitched in his cheek.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A muscle on Yang's face twitched.
▪ Greg's always twitching - it makes me nervous.
▪ Mac was very nervous. A muscle on his face began to twitch.
▪ My right eyelid wouldn't stop twitching.
▪ Roberta's mouth twitched as she tried to stop herself laughing out loud.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Amanda's legs were so thin ... A muscle in her neck twitched, twitched again.
▪ Hazel stared, twitching his nose.
▪ He was quiet, and his eyes were twitching.
▪ Her buttocks were twitching rhythmically to the music.
▪ Limp and relaxed, my jaw was beginning to twitch.
▪ The muscles of Artai's head and shoulders seemed to twitch.
▪ The spiders reach the joining at the trunk and settle there, twitching.
II.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
nervous
▪ Constant activity can easily become an ineffectual nervous twitch.
▪ He had a nervous twitch and a speech impediment.
▪ He had a nervous twitch which jerked at a muscle at the corner of his thin-lipped mouth and a malevolent stare.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A twitch of anxiety crossed my father's face.
▪ It's just a nervous twitch.
▪ There was a twitch in my left cheek which I couldn't control.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Even before its last twitch they sprang forward, securing the room.
▪ I laid it on soil; the shoulders managed a few slow twitches, pulled it an inch forward.
▪ Some experiments on skeletal-muscle strips have demonstrated that caffeine increases contractions, which might seem to explain some of the twitch phenomena.
▪ The muscles involved in such tremors and twitches are skeletal, as opposed to cardiac or smooth muscle.
▪ The ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch fibres varies between individuals and is determined by heredity.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Twitch

Twitch \Twitch\, n.

  1. The act of twitching; a pull with a jerk; a short, sudden, quick pull; as, a twitch by the sleeve.

  2. A short, spastic contraction of the fibers or muscles; a simple muscular contraction; as, convulsive twitches; a twitch in the side.

  3. (Far.) 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. By twisting the stick the compression is made sufficiently painful to keep the animal quiet during a slight surgical operation.
    --J. H. Walsh.

Twitch

Twitch \Twitch\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Twitched; p. pr. & vb. n. Twitching.] [OE. twicchen, fr. (doubtful) AS. twiccian; akin to AS. angeltwicca a worm used for bait, literally, a hook twitcher, LG. twikken to tweak, G. zwicken. Cf. Tweak.] To pull with a sudden jerk; to pluck with a short, quick motion; to snatch; as, to twitch one by the sleeve; to twitch a thing out of another's hand; to twitch off clusters of grapes.

Thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear.
--Pope.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
twitch

late 12c., to-twic-chen "pull apart with a quick jerk," related to Old English twiccian "to pluck, gather, catch hold of," from Proto-Germanic *twikjon- (cognates: Low German twicken, Dutch twikken, Old High German gizwickan, German zwicken "to pinch, tweak"). Related: Twitched; twitching.

twitch

1520s, from twitch (v.).

Wiktionary
twitch

Etymology 1 n. 1 A brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again; a spasm. 2 (context informal English) Action of spotting or seeking out a bird, especially a rare one. 3 (context farriery English) 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. vb. 1 (context intransitive English) To perform a twitch; spasm. 2 (context transitive English) To jerk sharply and briefly. 3 (context transitive English) To spot or seek out a bird, especially a rare one. Etymology 2

n. couch grass, ''Elymus repens''; a species of grass, often considered as a weed.

WordNet
twitch
  1. n. a sudden muscle spasm; especially one caused by a nervous condition [syn: twitching, vellication]

  2. v. make an uncontrolled, short, jerky motion; "his face is twitching" [syn: jerk]

  3. move with abrupt, seemingly uncontrolled motions; "The patient's legs were jerkings" [syn: jerk]

  4. toss with a sharp movement so as to cause to turn over in the air [syn: flip]

  5. squeeze tightly between the fingers; "He pinched her behind"; "She squeezed the bottle" [syn: pinch, squeeze, twinge, tweet, nip]

  6. move or pull with a sudden motion

Wikipedia
Twitch

Twitch may refer to:

Twitch (Ministry album)

Twitch is the second studio album by industrial metal band Ministry, released in 1986. The album stepped away from the pop-oriented form of their previous album With Sympathy and moved toward a darker, more aggressive sound in the form of EBM. Released by Sire Records, Jourgensen was granted more artistic control over the production than under Arista/BMG. Twitch was re-released in 1990 with two additional tracks.

Twitched, an unauthorized 2003 release by Radioactive Records, is a remastered version of Twitch, featuring the track listing that the band is said to have intended it to have before the intervention of the record company. It includes previously unreleased alternative versions of tracks from the album.

"Over the Shoulder" was the only single from the album.

Twitch (EP)

Twitch is an EP, and the first official release, by Australian alternative rock band Jebediah. It was released on 5 August 1996 by record label Murmur.

Twitch (Aldo Nova album)

Twitch is the third studio album by Canadian rock musician Aldo Nova, released in 1985.

Twitch (film)

Twitch is a Student Academy Award-nominated short film directed by Leah Meyerhoff.

Twitch kicked off the film festival circuit by winning a Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance and going on to screen in over 200 film festivals worldwide. Twitch has since won over a dozen international awards and is currently airing on the Independent Film Channel and Skandinavia TV.

Twitch (device)

A twitch is a device that is used to restrain horses for various stressful situations, such as veterinary treatment. It is believed that a twitch calms the horse by releasing endorphins as pressure is applied, thus reducing stress and pain, though this is disputed. It is usually made up of a stick-like handle loop of chain or rope on the end, or a metal ring with a rope loop which is wrapped around the upper lip of the horse and tightened. Another design, sometimes called a "humane" twitch, is a plier-like clamp that squeezes the lip with motion akin to that seen in a nutcracker. The aluminium screw twitch is yet another form of twitch.

Twitch (TV series)

Twitch is an American reality television show which ran between 1995 and 1997, and was the first nationally broadcast weekly video game review show, a predecessor for such shows as Attack Of The Show! and GameTrailers TV. It was created and produced by "Unity Entertainment" based out of Denver, Colorado and was a staple program for the TV! television network (as it was known in 1995) as its chief nationwide distributor.

Usage examples of "twitch".

Twitch: Brad tends to vocally anagrammatize, scrambling letters within a word rather than scrambling the order of the words themselves like Walter.

Trolloc bared goat teeth at him in a snarl, ears twitching beside its horns.

He saw the barghest twitching only a few feet away and tried to rise in defense, but darkness overwhelmed him.

Slowly he raised his hand, twitching with excitement, and stretched it out towards the cheque, but, before his fingers touched it, Lady Bellamy, as though by accident, dropped her white palm upon the precious paper.

Bellis felt the air beside her twitch, disturbed, as the other two grindylow wriggled their bodies, sending a ripple from their shoulders through their taut bellies and down their elongated tails.

Lee was eyeballing them, his face twitching in a half dozen directions, the Benzedrine man from outer space.

Big Screen was like an electroshock cattle prod hammered down the earthquake faults of human identity which ripple and shudder at magnitude ten and slip and slide and pulverize and resettle into new and rarely improved and NEVER stable identities and wait for the next inevitable twitch and shudder that will send reality sprawling once again like pieces of ice flying around a high-speed blender and create a new and even more unstable formation and reinforce the creeping paranoia that has flooded the dazed soul that WAS you but has become something else, something different THAT was what FILM could do.

Six of them toppled immediately: masses of twitching, disorganized, heterogeneous matter that ruined the floor wherever they fell, warping and buckling it with blitter scars.

Garth Breise twitched his nose repeatedly but made no comment, Yomin Carr noted with some relief.

Badger had barely twitched aside when the sizzling death clipped his brisket and hurled him against the wall.

The girl obeyed, but her hand twitched longingly toward her knife as she approached.

I was jumpy in my synthetic skin, twitching like a meth comedown, uncomfortable with who I physically was.

I wrap my arms around the spastic matter that twitches in my midriff as they begin to herd us.

The sound in the mousery grew, augmented by flicking tails and twitching feet.

A twitch of his finger on the trigger was the most practical next move, but how would he ever explain shooting the good Reverend John Murrell, Esquire, in cold blood?