different between twist vs fancy

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

Alternative forms

• fant’sy, phancie, phancy, phansie, phansy, phant’sy (all obsolete)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?fæn.si/
• Rhymes: -ænsi

Etymology 1

From Middle English fansy, fantsy, a contraction of fantasy, fantasye, fantasie, from Old French fantasie, from Medieval Latin fantasia, from Late Latin phantasia (“an idea, notion, fancy, phantasm”), from Ancient Greek ???????? (phantasía), from ??????? (phantáz?, “to render visible”), from ?????? (phantós, “visible”), from ????? (phaín?, “to make visible”); from the same root as ??? (phôs, “light”). Doublet of fantasia, fantasy, phantasia, and phantasy.

Noun

fancy (plural fancies)

1. The imagination.
   • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 5, lines 100-103,^[1]

     […] But know that in the soul

     Are many lesser faculties, that serve

     Reason as chief; among these Fancy next

     Her office holds […]

   • 1842, Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall

     In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove; / In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

   • 1861, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “A New Counterblast” in Atlantic Monthly, December 1861, p. 700,^[2]

     Rustic females who habitually chew even pitch or spruce-gum are rendered thereby so repulsive that the fancy refuses to pursue the horror farther and imagine it tobacco […]
2. An image or representation of anything formed in the mind.

   Synonyms: conception, thought, idea

   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act III, Scene 2,^[3]

     How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,

     Of sorriest fancies your companions making,

     Using those thoughts which should indeed have died

     With them they think on?

3. An opinion or notion formed without much reflection.

   Synonym: impression

   • 1650, John Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d, 2nd edition, London, 1653, Epistle Dedicatory, pp. 2-3,^[4]

     When you have well viewed the Scenes and Devillish shapes of this Practicall Metamorphosis, and scan’d them in your serious thoughts, you will wonder at their audacious phant’sies, who seeme to hold Specificall deformities, or that any part can seeme unhandsome in their Eyes, which hath appeared good and beautifull unto their Maker […]

   • 1693, John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 13th edition, London, 1764, §148, p. 222, ^[5]

     I have always had a Fancy, that Learning might be made a Play and Recreation to Children […]
4. A whim.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:whim

5. Love or amorous attachment.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:predilection

6. The object of inclination or liking.
   • c. 1595, William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I, Scene 1,^[7]

     For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself

     To fit your fancies to your father’s will;

7. Any sport or hobby pursued by a group.

   Synonyms: hobby; see also Thesaurus:hobby

8. The enthusiasts of such a pursuit.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:fan

   • 1830, Thomas De Quincey, “Review of Life of Richard Bentley, D.D. by J.H. Monk, D.D.” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 28, No. 171, September 1830, p. 446, footnote,^[8]

     […] at a great book sale in London, which had congregated all the Fancy, on a copy occurring, not one of the company but ourself knew what the mystical title-page meant.

9. A diamond with a distinctive colour.
10. That which pleases or entertains the taste or caprice without much use or value.
    • 18th century, John Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving Land, cited in Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755,^[9]

      London-pride is a pretty fancy, and does well for borders.

11. A bite-sized sponge cake, with a layer of cream, covered in icing.

    a French fancy; a fondant fancy; cream fancies

12. (obsolete) A sort of love song or light impromptu ballad.
    • c. 1596–1599, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, Act III, Scene 2,^[10]

      [He] sung those tunes to the overscutch’d huswifes that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his fancies or his good-nights.

13. In the game of jacks, a style of play involving additional actions (contrasted with plainsies).
    • 1970, Marta Weigle, Follow my fancy: the book of jacks and jack games (page 22)

      When you have mastered plainsies, the regular jack game, and have learned all the rules, you will be ready to use this part of the book. A fancy is a variation of plainsies which usually requires more skill than plainsies does.

    • 2002, Elizabeth Dana Jaffe, Sherry L. Field, Linda D. Labbo, Jacks (page 26)

      When you get good at jacks, try adding a fancy. A fancy is an extra round at the end of a game. It makes the game a little harder. Jack Be Nimble, Around the World, or Black Widow are some fancies.

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

fancy (comparative fancier, superlative fanciest)

1. Decorative.

   Synonyms: decorative, ornate

   Antonyms: plain, simple

2. Of a superior grade.

   Synonym: high-end

3. Executed with skill.

4. (colloquial) Unnecessarily complicated.

   Synonym: highfalutin

   Antonym: simple

5. (obsolete) Extravagant; above real value.

Derived terms

• fancy man

Translations

Descendants

• ? German: fancy
• ? Norwegian Bokmål: fancy
• ? Norwegian Nynorsk: fancy

Adverb

fancy (not comparable)

1. (nonstandard) In a fancy manner; fancily.

Etymology 2

From Middle English fancien, fantasien, fantesien, from Old French fantasier, from the noun (see above)).

Verb

fancy (third-person singular simple present fancies, present participle fancying, simple past and past participle fancied)

1. (formal) To appreciate without jealousy or greed.

2. (Britain) would like

   Synonym: feel like

3. (Britain, informal) To be sexually attracted to.

   Synonym: (US) like

4. (dated) To imagine, suppose.

   • If our search has reached no farther than simile and metaphor, we rather fancy than know.

   • 1857-1859, William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians

     He fancied he was welcome, because those around him were his kinsmen.

   • 1895, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine Chapter X

     I fancied at first the stuff was paraffin wax, and smashed the jar accordingly. But the odor of camphor was unmistakable.

5. To form a conception of; to portray in the mind.

   Synonym: imagine

   • he whom I fancy, but can ne'er express

6. To have a fancy for; to like; to be pleased with, particularly on account of external appearance or manners.
7. (transitive) To breed (animals) as a hobby.
   • 1973, American Pigeon Journal (page 159)

     I would recommend this little book very highly to anyone who fancies pigeons, novices and veterans alike.

Derived terms

• fancy man
• fancy one's chances
• fancy that

Translations

See also

• fantasy
• fancy man
• fancypants
• fancy woman

References

Further reading

• Fancy in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

German

Etymology

Borrowed from English fancy. Doublet of Fantasie.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?fænsi/

Adjective

fancy (not comparable)

1. (colloquial, fashion) fancy

Declension

Further reading

• “fancy” in Duden online

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

Borrowed from English fancy.

Adjective

fancy (indeclinable)

1. fancy

References

• “fancy” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

Borrowed from English fancy.

Adjective

fancy (indeclinable)

1. fancy

References

• “fancy” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.