different between twist vs wring

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 1

From Middle English wryngen, wringen, from Old English wringan, from Proto-Germanic *wringan? (compare West Frisian wringe, Low German wringen, Dutch wringen, German ringen ‘to wrestle’), from Proto-Indo-European *wren??- (compare Lithuanian reñgtis (“to bend down”), Ancient Greek ????? (rhímpha, “fast”)), nasalized variant of *wer??- ‘bind, squeeze’. More at worry.

Pronunciation

• enPR: r?ng, IPA^(key): /???/
• Homophone: ring
• Rhymes: -??

Verb

wring (third-person singular simple present wrings, present participle wringing, simple past wrung or wrang or (obsolete) wringed, past participle wrung or (obsolete) wringed)

1. To squeeze or twist (something) tightly so that liquid is forced out. See also wring out.
   • 1838, Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, London: Wiley and Putnam, Chapter 13, p. 152,^[1]

     […] we contrived to satisfy the cravings of thirst by suffering the shirts to become saturated, and then wringing them so as to let the grateful fluid trickle into our mouths.

   • 1933, George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz, Chapter 21, p. 154,^[2]

     […] he had sometimes wrung a dirty dishcloth into a customer’s soup before taking it in, just to be revenged upon a member of the bourgeoisie.

   • 1988, Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons, New York: Knopf, Part 1, Chapter 1, p. 15,^[3]

     “I feel I’ve been wrung through a wringer,” Maggie said.

2. To extract (a liquid) from something wet, especially cloth, by squeezing and twisting it.
   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Judges 6.38,^[4]

     He rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece.

   • 1748, Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random, London: J. Osborn, Volume 1, Chapter 14, p. 107,^[5]

     [He] wrung the urine out of his perriwig, and lifting up a large stone, flung it with such force against the street-door of that house from whence he had been bedewed, that the lock giving way, it flew wide open,

   • 1952, Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road, New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969, Chapter 8, p. 128,^[6]

     Heinz could have wrung enough vinegar out of Cally’s look to run his pickle works.

   • 1989, John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany, New York: William Morrow, Chapter 8, p. 381,^[7]

     […] he was thrilled by the spectacle of wringing his own blood from the sodden gauze pad into the sodden towel.

3. To obtain (something from or out of someone or something) by force.

   The police said they would wring the truth out of that heinous criminal.

   • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act III, Scene 1,^[8]

     No, Harry, Harry, ’tis no land of thine;

     Thy place is fill’d, thy sceptre wrung from thee,

   • 1741, Samuel Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, London: C. Rivington and J. Osborn, Volume 1, Letter 31, p. 268,^[9]

     Torture should not wring it from me, I assure you.

   • 1910, Emma Goldman, “Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure” in Anarchism and Other Essays, New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, pp. 129-130,^[10]

     […] the enormous profits thus wrung from convict labor are a constant incentive to the contractors to exact from their unhappy victims tasks altogether beyond their strength […]

   • 1931, Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth, New York: John Day, Chapter 3, p. 35,^[11]

     He took his life from this earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver.

   • 1970, Robertson Davies, Fifth Business, Toronto: Macmillan, Part 6, Chapter 2, p. 278,^[12]

     […] his confidences were not wrung from him against his will but gushed like oil from a well

4. To draw (something from or out of someone); to generate (something) as a response.

   Synonyms: elicit, provoke

   • c. 1598, William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, Act V, Scene 1,^[13]

     Your over-kindness doth wring tears from me!

   • 1846, Charlotte Brontë, “Evening Solace” in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, London: Smith, Elder, p. 122,^[14]

     And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,

     Now cause but some mild tears to flow.
5. To hold (something) tightly and press or twist.

   (Synonyms: strangle, throttle)

   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Leviticus 1.15,^[15]

     The priest shall bring it [a dove] unto the altar, and wring off his head,

   • 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, London: Chapman & Hall, Volume 1, Chapter 16, p. 195,^[16]

     Margaret could not speak for crying; but she wrung his hand at parting.

   • 1915, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of the Island, Boston: Page, Chapter 40, p. 316,^[17]

     The Haunted Wood was full of the groans of mighty trees wrung in the tempest,

   • 1929, William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, New York: Vintage, 1956, “April Eighth, 1928,” p. 379,^[18]

     Jason stood, slowly wringing the brim of his hat in his hands.

   • 2008, Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger, London: Atlantic Books, p. 202,^[19]

     […] I had to wring your ears to make you do any work.

6. To cause pain or distress to (someone / one's heart, soul, etc.).

   Synonyms: torment, torture

   • 1622, Francis Bacon, The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seuenth, London: Matthew Lownes and William Barret, p. 37,^[20]

     […] the King began to find where his Shooe did wring him, and that it was his depressing of the House of YORKE, that did ranckle and fester the affections of his People.

   • 1702, Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Oxford, 1707, Volume 1, Part 1, Book , p. 60,^[21]

     […] too much griev’d, and wrung by an uneasy and streight Fortune;

   • 1713, Joseph Addison, Cato, a Tragedy, London: J. Tonson, Act 1, Scene 1, p. 3,^[22]

     […] didst thou taste but half the Griefs

     That wring my Soul, thou cou’dst not talk thus coldly.

   • 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case,” p. 135,^[23]

     […] a stringent and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break

   • 1927, Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse, London: The Hogarth Press, Part 3, section 6, p. 275,^[24]

     And then to want and not to have—to want and want—how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!

7. To slide two ultraflat surfaces together such that their faces bond.
   • 2010, Mikhail Grishin, Advances in Solid State Lasers: Development and Applications, BoD – Books on Demand (?ISBN), page 186:

     The uncertainty of wringing effect is 6.9 nm, which can be determined by wringing the same gauge block on the base plate repeatedly. The uncertainty of optical components can be estimated by wave-front errors of each components, ?/10~ ...

   • 2001, Jennifer E. Decker, Nicholas Brown, Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers, European Optical Society, Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft Lasertechnik, Recent Developments in Traceable Dimensional Measurements: 20-21 June 2001, Munich, Germany, Society of Photo Optical (?ISBN)

     The surface finish of the ceramic platen appears very similar to that of the gauge block by eye . The pack experiment method to evaluate phase correction is valuable in that the differences associated with wringing two different materials and ...

   • 1997, Bulletin of NRLM.

     The number of optical wringing procedures performed for each gauge block was five , and the number of measurements for each wringing procedure was eleven . Figure 10 shows the dispersion of ( EGB + ESUB ) for gauge block GB - 100A ...

   • 1922, Canada. Patent Office, The Canadian Patent Office Record and Register of Copyrights and Trade Marks

     A gauge block provided with a flat surface adapted to have wringing engagement with a similar surface of another block and having uniformly distributed approximately straight scratches extending in all directions. 5. A gauge block provided ...

8. (intransitive, obsolete) To twist, as if in pain.

   Synonym: writhe

   • c. 1598, William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, Act V, Scene 1,^[25]

     […] ’tis all men’s office to speak patience

     To those that wring under the load of sorrow.

9. (obsolete) To give an incorrect meaning to (words, teachings, etc.).

   Synonyms: distort, pervert, twist, wrest

   • 1572, John Whitgift, An Answere to a Certen Libel Intituled, An Admonition to the Parliament, London: Humfrey Toy, p. 39,^[26]

     Lord how dare these men thus wring the scriptures?

10. (obsolete) To subject (someone) to extortion; to afflict or oppress in order to enforce compliance.
    • c. 1590,, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act V, Scene 1,^[27]

      To wring the widow from her custom’d right,

    • 1630, John Hayward, The Life and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt, London: John Partridge, p. 144,^[28]

      […] the Merchant aduenturers haue beene often wronged and wringed to the quicke,

11. (nautical) To bend or strain out of its position.

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

wring (plural wrings)

1. A powerful squeezing or twisting action.

   I grasped his hand and gave it a grateful wring.

   • 1697, John Vanbrugh, The Relapse, London: Samuel Briscoe, Act III, p. 45,^[29]

     Lo[ry]. […] I have been in a lamentable fright, Sir, ever since your Conscience had the Impudence to intrude into your Company.

     Y[oung] Fas[hion]. Be at peace; it will come there no more: My Brother has given it a wring by the Nose, and I have kick’d it down Stairs.

   • 1883, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London: Cassell, Part 3, Chapter 15, p. 123,^[30]

     He was still holding me by the wrist, and at that he gave it quite a wring.

   • 1919, Henry Blake Fuller, Bertram Cope’s Year, Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chapter 6, p. 63,^[31]

     I tried not to give his poor hand too much of a wring (another of my bad habits); but he took all I gave and even seemed to hang on for a little more.

2. (obsolete) Pain or distress.
   • 1637, Robert Monro, Monro His Expedition with the Worthy Scots Regiment, London, “The first Observation,” p. 3,^[32]

     When we have good dayes we slight them, when they are gone, we sinke under the wring of sorrow, for their losse;

References

• wring in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• wring in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Etymology 2

From Middle English wrynge (“press”), from Old English wringe.

Noun

wring

1. (archaic) A device for pressing or compressing, especially for cider.

   Synonym: press

   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, London: James R. Osgood, Volume 2, Phase 3, Chapter 23, p. 32,^[36]

     They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the cheese-wring dripped monotonously downstairs.

Derived terms

• cider-wring
• wring-house

Dutch

Pronunciation

Verb

wring

1. first-person singular present indicative of wringen
2. imperative of wringen

Middle English

Verb

wring

1. Alternative form of wryngen