different between twitch vs earthquake

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

English

Etymology

From Middle English erthequake, erd-quake, corresponding to earth +? quake. Compare similar formations in eorþbeofung (“earthquake”, literally “earth-shaking”), eorþdyne (“earthquake”, literally “earth-din”), eorþstyring (“earthquake”, literally “earth-stirring”), eorþhr?rness (“earthquake”, literally “earth-stirring”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /????kwe?k/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /???kwe?k/

Noun

earthquake (plural earthquakes)

1. A shaking of the ground, caused by volcanic activity or movement around geologic faults. [from 14th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:

     Her alablaster brest she soft did kis, / Which all that while shee felt to pant and quake, / As it an Earth-quake were: at last she thus bespake.

   • 2006, Declan Walsh, The Guardian, 6 Oct 2006:

     Last year's earthquake crushed his house, his livelihood and very nearly his leg, he said, pointing to a plastered limb that refuses to heal.

2. (planetary geology) Such a quake specifically occurring on the planet Earth, as opposed to other celestial bodies. [from 20th c.]
   • 1988, Jürgen Oberst and Yosio Nakamura, “A seismic risk for the lunar base” in The Second Conference on Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century, Vol. 1, p. 231-233, NASA:

     Since the response of some man-made structures to the ground motion near the epicenter is highly dependent on frequency, a significant difference in potential damage to the structures is expected between earthquakes and moonquakes.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Related terms

• moonquake
• seaquake
• starquake

Translations

Verb

earthquake (third-person singular simple present earthquakes, present participle earthquaking, simple past and past participle earthquaked)

1. (intransitive) To undergo an earthquake.
   • 1993, Gyeorgos C. Hatonn, The Best of Times: The Worst of Times (page 129)

     Watch the Philippines very closely for the next little while. There is rumbling and earthquaking deep within Pinatubo and increased earthquaking within Mayon.

See also

• aftershock
• earthquake engineering
• fault line
• Richter scale
• seismic
• seismograph
• seismologist
• seismology
• tremor
• tsunami

Further reading

• earthquake on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Tectonic hazards/Earthquake on Wikiversity.Wikiversity
• Category:Animations of earthquake impact on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

Anagrams

• heartquake

Scots

Alternative forms

• yirthquake, yearthquawk

Noun

earthquake (plural earthquakes)

1. earthquake

   Synonym: yirdquauk