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writhe

Pronunciation: /ɹaɪð/

The English word “writhe” has 6 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To twist, wring (something).
  2. To contort (a part of the body).
  3. To twist bodily; to contort one's self; to be distorted.
  4. To extort.

noun

  1. A contortion.
  2. The number of negative crossings subtracted from the number of positive crossings in a knot

Etymology

From Middle English writhen, from Old English wrīþan, from Proto-West Germanic *wrīþan, from Proto-Germanic *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist, turn”), from Proto-Indo-European *wreyt- (“to twist, writhe”). Cognate with Middle Dutch writen (“to turn, twist”), dialectal German reiden (“to turn, twist, lace”), Danish vride (“to twist”), Swedish vrida (“to turn, twist, wind”), French rider (“to wrinkle,…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.