different between twist vs humour

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

• humor (American)

Etymology

From Middle English humour, from Old French humor, from Latin humor, correctly umor (“moisture”), from hum?, correctly um? (“to be moist”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?hju?.m?(?)/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?hju?m?/, /?ju?m?/
• Hyphenation: hu?mour
• Rhymes: -u?m?(?)

Noun

humour (usually uncountable, plural humours) (British spelling)

1. (uncountable) The quality of being amusing, comical, funny. [from the early 18th c.]
   • 1774, Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation

     For thy sake I admit / That a Scot may have humour, I'd almost said wit.

   • A great deal of excellent humour was expended on the perplexities of mine host.

   Synonyms: amusingness, comedy, comicality, wit

2. (uncountable) A mood, especially a bad mood; a temporary state of mind or disposition brought upon by an event; an abrupt illogical inclination or whim.
   • 1625, Francis Bacon, Apophthegms

     a prince of a pleasant humour

   • 1684, Lord Roscommon, Essay on Translated Verse

     Examine how your humour is inclined, / And which the ruling passion of your mind.

   • Is my friend all perfection, all virtue and discretion? Has he not humours to be endured?

   Synonym: mood

3. (archaic or historical) Any of the fluids in an animal body, especially the four "cardinal humours" of blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm that were believed to control the health and mood of the human body.
   • , Book I, New York 2001,page 147:

     A humour is a liquid or fluent part of the body, comprehended in it, for the preservation of it; and is either innate or born with us, or adventitious and acquisite.

   • 1763, Antoine-Simon Le Page Du Pratz, History of Louisisana (PG), (tr. 1774) page 42:

     For some days a fistula lacrymalis had come into my left eye, which discharged an humour, when pressed, that portended danger.

   Synonym: bodily fluid

4. (medicine) Either of the two regions of liquid within the eyeball, the aqueous humour and vitreous humour.
5. (obsolete) Moist vapour, moisture.

Synonyms

• (something funny): comedy, wit, witticism

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

• ? Korean: ?? (yumeo)

Translations

Verb

humour (third-person singular simple present humours, present participle humouring, simple past and past participle humoured)

1. (transitive) To pacify by indulging.

Translations

See also

• humour on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English humour. Doublet of humeur.

Pronunciation

• ^{(mute h)} IPA^(key): /y.mu?/
• Rhymes: -u?

Noun

humour m (plural humours)

1. humor; comic effect in a communication or performance.

Derived terms

Further reading

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

Italian

Etymology

From English humour.

Noun

humour m (invariable)

1. sense of humour

Further reading

• humour in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Middle English

Alternative forms

• humore, umour, humor, humur, humer

Etymology

From Old French humor, from Latin h?mor, ?mor.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /iu??mu?r/, /?iu?mur/

Noun

humour (plural humours)

1. A "cardinal humour" (four liquids believed to affect health and mood)
2. A bodily liquid or substance that causes disease or affliction.
3. A bodily liquid or substance that is caused by disease.
4. One of the two (usually reckoned as three or four) fluidous portions of the eye.
5. Any fluid; something which flows or moves in a fluidous manner:
   1. The liquid contained within a plant; plant juices.
   2. (rare) A liquid of the human body (e.g. blood)
6. A mist or gas; a substance dissipated in the air.
7. (rare) One of the four classical elements (fire, earth, air, and water).

Descendants

• English: humour, humor
• Scots: humour

References

• “h?m?ur, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-12-09.

See also

• (four humours) flewme,? coler,? malencolie,? sanguine ^[edit]

Old French

Noun

humour m or f

1. (Anglo-Norman) Alternative form of humor