different between jostle vs twitch

English

Etymology

Originally justle (“to have sex with”), formed from Middle English jousten, from the Old French joster (“to joust”), from Latin iuxt? (“next to”), from iung? (“join, connect”), equivalent to joust +? -le.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?d??s.?l/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?d??.s?l/
• Rhymes: -?s?l

Verb

jostle (third-person singular simple present jostles, present participle jostling, simple past and past participle jostled)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To bump into or brush against while in motion; to push aside.
   • 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, London: J. Johnson, Part 1, Chapter 13, Section 3, pp. 434-435,^[1]

     Besides, various are the paths to power and fame which by accident or choice men pursue, and though they jostle against each other, for men of the same profession are seldom friends, yet there is a much greater number of their fellow-creatures with whom they never clash. But women are very differently situated with respect to each other—for they are all rivals.

   • 1832, Isaac Taylor, Saturday Evening, Chapter 12, p. 214,^[2]

     It is not that there are several systems of movement, physical, intellectual, and moral, which are perpetually jostling each other, or which clash whenever they come in contact, and which move on by the one vanquishing the other. But, on the contrary, each of these economies takes its uninterrupted course, as if there were no other moving within the same space […]

   • 1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, Volume 1, Chapter 3, pp. 370-371,^[3]

     […] when the lord of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. […] Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from head to foot. […]
2. (intransitive) To move through by pushing and shoving.
   • 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, Book One, Chapter 3,^[4]

     Axia and Amory, acquaintances of an hour, jostled behind a waiter to a table at a point of vantage; there they took seats and watched.

3. (transitive) To be close to or in physical contact with.
   • 1859, Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, London: John Murray, Chapter 4, p. 114,^[5]

     […] the advantages of diversification of structure, with the accompanying differences of habit and constitution, determine that the inhabitants, which thus jostle each other most closely, shall, as a general rule, belong to what we call different genera and orders.

4. (intransitive) To contend or vie in order to acquire something.
   • 1819, Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor, in Tales of My Landlord, Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, Third Series, Volume 1, Chapter 1, p. 22,^[6]

     Dick, who, in serious earnest, was supposed to have considerable natural talents for his profession, and whose vain and sanguine disposition never permitted him to doubt for a moment of ultimate success, threw himself headlong into the crowd which jostled and struggled for notice and preferment.

   • 1917, Rudyard Kipling, “The Children,” poem accompanying the story “The Honours of War” in A Diversity of Creatures, London: Macmillan, pp. 129-130,^[7]

     […] Our statecraft, our learning

     Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning

     Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour.

5. (dated, slang) To pick or attempt to pick pockets.

Translations

See also

• justle
• joust

Noun

jostle (plural jostles)

1. The act of jostling someone or something; push, shove.
   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, London: J. Cooke, 1765, p. 241,^[8]

     I had full hold of her Watch, but giving a great Jostle, as if somebody had thrust me against her, and in the Juncture giving the Watch a fair pull, I found it would not come, so I let it go that Moment, and cried out as if I had been killed, that somebody had trod upon my Foot […]

2. The action of a jostling crowd.
   • 1865, Harriet Beecher Stowe (under the pseudonym Christopher Crowfield), The Chimney-Corner, Boston: Ticknor & Field, 1868, Chapter 12, p. 291,^[9]

     For years to come, the average of lone women will be largely increased; and the demand, always great, for some means by which they many provide for themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will become more urgent and imperative.

Translations

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English twicchen, from Old English *twi??an, from Proto-West Germanic *twikkijan (“to nail, pin, fasten, clasp, pinch”). Cognate with English tweak, Low German twikken, German Low German twicken (“to pinch, pinch off”), zweck?n and gizwickan (> German zwicken (“to pinch”)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tw?t??/, [t?w??t??]
• Rhymes: -?t?

Noun

twitch (countable and uncountable, plural twitches)

1. A brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again; a spasm.

2. (informal) Action of spotting or seeking out a bird, especially a rare one.
3. (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.

4. (physiology) A brief, contractile response of a skeletal muscle elicited by a single maximal volley of impulses in the neurons supplying it.
5. (mining) The sudden narrowing almost to nothing of a vein of ore.
6. (birdwatching) A trip taken in order to observe a rare bird.

Derived terms

• nervous twitch
• twitch game

Translations

References

• Twitch in The Free Dictionary (Medicine)

Verb

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

1. (intransitive) To perform a twitch; spasm.

2. (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...

3. (transitive) To jerk sharply and briefly.

   • Thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear.

4. (obsolete) To exert oneself. [15th-17th c.]
5. (transitive) To spot or seek out a bird, especially a rare one.
   • 1995, Quarterly Review of Biology vol. 70 p. 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. "

Translations

Usage notes

When used of birdwatchers by ignorant outsiders, this term frequently carries a negative connotation.

Derived terms

• atwitch

Etymology 2

alternate of quitch

Noun

twitch (uncountable)

1. couch grass (Elymus repens; a species of grass, often considered as a weed)

Translations