different between twist vs deform

English

Etymology

From Middle English twist, from Old English *twist, in compounds (e.g. mæsttwist (“a rope; stay”), candeltwist (“a wick”)), from Proto-Germanic *twistaz, a derivative of *twi- (“two-”) (compare also twine, between, betwixt).

Related to Saterland Frisian Twist (“discord”), Dutch twist (“twist; strife; discord”), German Low German Twist (“strife; discord”), German Zwist (“turmoil; strife; discord”), Swedish tvist (“quarrel; dispute”), Icelandic tvistur (“deuce”).

The verb is from Middle English twisten. Compare Dutch twisten, Danish tviste (“to dispute”), Swedish tvista (“to argue; dispute”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: tw?st, IPA^(key): /tw?st/, [tw??st]
• Rhymes: -?st

Noun

twist (plural twists)

1. A twisting force.
2. Anything twisted, or the act of twisting.
   • 1906, Edith Nesbit, The Railway Children Chapter 8

     Peter was always proud afterwards when he remembered that, with the Bargee's furious fingers tightening on his ear, the Bargee's crimson countenance close to his own, the Bargee's hot breath on his neck, he had the courage to speak the truth.

     "I wasn't catching fish," said Peter.

     "That's not your fault, I'll be bound," said the man, giving Peter's ear a twist—not a hard one—but still a twist.

   • Not the least turn or twist in the fibres of any one animal which does not render them more proper for that particular animal's way of life than any other cast or texture.

3. The form given in twisting.
   • 1712, John Arbuthnot, The History of John Bull

     [He] shrunk at first sight of it; he found fault with the length, the thickness, and the twist.

4. The degree of stress or strain when twisted.
5. A type of thread made from two filaments twisted together.
   • 1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 140:

     I was one morning walking arm in arm with him in St James's Park, his dress then being […] waistcoat and breeches of the same blue satin, trimmed with silver twist à la hussarde, and ermine edges.

6. A sliver of lemon peel added to a cocktail, etc.
   • 2005, Theodore J. Albasini, The Progeny

     Bunny sat on the only remaining stool at the leather-padded oval bar in the Iron Lounge. It was happy hour, two drinks for the price of one. She decided on a martini with a twist, and while the bartender was preparing her drink, she scanned the faces looking at the bar.

7. A sudden bend (or short series of bends) in a road, path, etc.
8. A distortion to the meaning of a word or passage.
9. An unexpected turn in a story, tale, etc.
10. (preceded by definite article) A type of dance characterised by rotating one’s hips. See Twist (dance) on Wikipedia for more details.
11. A rotation of the body when diving.
12. A sprain, especially to the ankle.
13. (obsolete) A twig.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Fairfax to this entry?)

14. (slang) A girl, a woman.
    • 1990, Miller's Crossing, 01:08:20

      (Dane, speaking about a woman character) "I'll see where the twist flops"

15. A roll or baton of baked dough or pastry in a twisted shape.
16. A small roll of tobacco.
17. A material for gun barrels, consisting of iron and steel twisted and welded together.

18. The spiral course of the rifling of a gun barrel or a cannon.
19. (obsolete, slang) A beverage made of brandy and gin.
20. A strong individual tendency or bent; inclination.

    a twist toward fanaticism

21. (slang, archaic) An appetite for food.
    • 1861, The Farmer's Magazine (page 40)

      He [the yearling bull] had a good handsome male head, and he had a capital twist. He had a spring in his rib, and was something over seven feet in girth. He was well covered, and had all the recommendations of quality, symmetry, and size.

Descendants

• German: Twist

Translations

Verb

twist (third-person singular simple present twists, present participle twisting, simple past and past participle twisted)

1. To turn the ends of something, usually thread, rope etc., in opposite directions, often using force.
2. To join together by twining one part around another.
   • 1900, L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Chapter 15

     "Well, one day I went up in a balloon and the ropes got twisted, so that I couldn't come down again. It went way up above the clouds, so far that a current of air struck it and carried it many, many miles away. For a day and a night I traveled through the air, and on the morning of the second day I awoke and found the balloon floating over a strange and beautiful country."

3. To contort; to writhe; to complicate; to crook spirally; to convolve.
   • June 8, 1714, Alexander Pope, letter to Jonathan Swift

     twisting it into a serpentine form.

4. To wreathe; to wind; to encircle; to unite by intertexture of parts.
   • 1645, Edmund Waller, To my Lord of Falkland

     longing to twist bays with that ivy

   • 1844, Robert Chambers, "Dr Thomas Burnet" in Cyclopædia of English Literature

     There are pillars of smoke twisted about wreaths of flame.

5. (reflexive) To wind into; to insinuate.

   Avarice twists itself into all human concerns.

6. To turn a knob etc.
7. To distort or change the truth or meaning of words when repeating.
8. To form a twist (in any of the above noun meanings).
9. To injure (a body part) by bending it in the wrong direction.
   • 1913, George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion Act V

     Oh, you are a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the last minute. And you don't care a bit for her. And you don't care a bit for me.

   • 1901, Henry Lawson, Joe Wilson's Courtship

     Then Romany went down, then we fell together, and the chaps separated us. I got another knock-down blow in, and was beginning to enjoy the novelty of it, when Romany staggered and limped.

     ‘I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He’d caught his heel against a tuft of grass.

10. (intransitive, of a path) To wind; to follow a bendy or wavy course; to have many bends.
    • 1926, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, He

      My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me.

11. (transitive) To cause to rotate.
    • 1911, John Masefield, Jim Davis Chapter 8

      The tide seized us and swept us along, and in the races where this happened there were sucking whirlpools, strong enough to twist us round.

12. (intransitive) To dance the twist (a type of dance characterised by twisting one's hips).
13. (transitive) To coax.
    • 1932, Robert E. Howard, Dark Shanghai

      "On the three-thousand-dollar reward John Bain is offerin' for the return of his sister," said Ace. "Now listen--I know a certain big Chinee had her kidnapped outa her 'rickshaw out at the edge of the city one evenin'. He's been keepin' her prisoner in his house, waitin' a chance to send her up-country to some bandit friends of his'n; then they'll be in position to twist a big ransome outa John Bain, see? [...]"

14. (card games) In the game of blackjack (pontoon or twenty-one), to be dealt another card.

Antonyms

(in blackjack, be dealt another card):: stick; stay

Translations

Derived terms

Anagrams

• twits, witts

Czech

Etymology

From English twist.

Noun

twist m

1. twist (dance)

Further reading

• twist in Kartotéka Novo?eského lexikálního archivu
• twist in Slovník spisovného jazyka ?eského, 1960–1971, 1989

Dutch

Etymology

From English twist.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -?st

Noun

twist m (uncountable, diminutive twistje n)

1. strife, discord
2. dispute
3. twist: dance, turn

Derived terms

• redetwist
• twistappel

Anagrams

• witst

Finnish

Etymology

From English twist.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?twist/, [?t?wis?t?]
• IPA^(key): /?t?ist/, [?t??is?t?]
• Rhymes: -ist
• Syllabification: twist

Noun

twist

1. twist (dance)

Declension

Derived terms

• twistata

French

Etymology

From English twist.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /twist/

Noun

twist m (plural twists)

1. twist (dance)

Derived terms

• twister

Further reading

• “twist” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Middle English

Alternative forms

• twest, tweste, twyst, twyste

Etymology

Old English *twist, attested in compounds (e.g. mæsttwist (“a rope; stay”), candeltwist (“a wick”)), from Proto-Germanic *twistaz.

Noun

twist (plural twists)

1. the flat part of a hinge (less specifically the entire hinge)
2. a forked twig
3. a bifurcation
   1. the groin

Descendants

• English: twist

Related terms

• twisten (verb)

References

• “twist, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Portuguese

Etymology

From English twist.

Noun

twist m (uncountable)

1. twist (type of dance)

Spanish

Etymology

From English twist.

Noun

twist m (plural twists)

1. twist

English

Etymology

From Middle English deformen, borrowed from Old French deformer, from Latin deformare, infinitive of deformo, from de- + formo (“to form”), from the noun forma (“form”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d??f??m/
• Rhymes: -??(r)m

Verb

deform (third-person singular simple present deforms, present participle deforming, simple past and past participle deformed)

1. (transitive) To change the form of, usually negatively; to give (something) an unusual or abnormal shape.
   • 1693, Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, London: J. Moxon, 2nd ed., “Continued in the Art of Joynery,” § 22, p. 90,^[1]

     [...] you must take care to keep the Bitt straight to the Hole you pierce, lest you deform the Hole, or break the Bitt.

   • 1847, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, Volume 1, Chapter 13, p. 323,^[2]

     [...] deep indentations deformed the panels of the walls.

   • 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, “The Last Night,” pp. 75-76,^[3]

     Your master, Poole, is plainly seized with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer; hence, for aught I know, the alteration of his voice; hence the mask and his avoidance of his friends [...]

   • 2000, Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, New York: Random House, Part 3, Chapter 2, p. 178,^[4]

     [...] Joe’s thick thatch of curls had been deformed by his headgear into a kind of glossy black hat [...]

2. (transitive) To change the looks of, usually negatively; to give something an unusual or abnormal appearance.

   Synonym: disfigure

   a face deformed by bitterness

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, London: William Ponsonbie, Book 3, Canto 6, p. 483,^[5]

     Some of them washing with the liquid dew

     From of their dainty limbs the dusty sweat,

     And soyle which did deforme their liuely hew,

   • 1774, Henry Home, Lord Kames, Sketches of the History of Man, Dublin: James Williams, Volume 3, Sketch 12, p. 102,^[6]

     [...] their faces and bodies being deformed with paint, in order to terrify the enemy.

   • 1933, Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Chapter 3, p. 49,^[7]

     Matisse at that time was at work at his first big decoration, Le Bonheur de Vivre. [...] It was in this picture that Matisse first clearly realised his intention of deforming the drawing of the human body in order to harmonise and intensify the colour values of all the simple colours mixed only with white.

3. (transitive) To mar the character of.

   a marriage deformed by jealousy

   • c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, Scene 2,^[8]

     [...] your beauty, ladies,

     Hath much deform’d us, fashioning our humours

     Even to the opposed end of our intents:

   • 1659, John Evelyn, A Character of England, London: Jo. Crooke, p. 28,^[9]

     [...] a Cento of unheard of Heresies [...] which, at present, deform the once renowned Church of England;

   • 1742, Samuel Richardson, Pamela, London: S. Richardson, Volume 3, Letter 32, p. 240,^[10]

     It made me tremble a little [...] to think what a sad thing Passion is, when Way is given to its ungovernable Tumults, and how it deforms and debases the noblest Minds!

   • 1772, George Colman, Prologue, in Elizabeth Griffith, A Wife in the Right, London: for the author,^[11]

     While narrow prejudice deform’d the age,

     No actress play’d, no female trod the Stage;

   • 1848, James Fenimore Cooper, The Oak Openings, New York: Burgess, Stringer, Volume 1, Chapter 10, p. 149,^[12]

     [...] the thousand and one sins that disgrace and deform society,

4. (transitive) To alter the shape of by stress.
5. (intransitive) To become misshapen or changed in shape.
   • 1974, Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, New York: Bantam, 1984, Part 2, Chapter 11, p. 117,^[13]

     [...] that metal’s hard and shiny and cold to the touch and deforms without breaking under blows from a harder material [...]

Synonyms

• distort, contort

Hyponyms

• buckle
• warp

Derived terms

• deformable
• deformer
• retrodeform

Related terms

• deformation
• deformity

Translations

Adjective

deform (comparative more deform, superlative most deform)

1. (obsolete) Having an unusual and unattractive shape.

   Synonyms: deformed, disfigured, misshapen

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.xii:

     who so kild that monster most deforme, / And him in hardy battaile ouercame, / Should haue mine onely daughter to his Dame […]

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 10, lines 491-492,^[14]

     Sight so deform what heart of Rock could long

     Drie-ey’d behold?

   • 1785, William Cowper, The Task, London: J. Johnson, Book 1, p. 28,^[15]

     The common overgrown with fern, and rough

     With prickly goss, that shapeless and deform

     And dang’rous to the touch, has yet its bloom

   • 1820, John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes, stanza 42, in Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: Taylor and Hessey, p. 104,^[16]

     Angela the old

     Died palsy-twitch’d, with meagre face deform;

Anagrams

• formed