twig

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (2)  · 
“
But, the thing that snaps me like a twig is the betrayal of our military men and women by the American electorate.

View all »
Definitions (27)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (6)

  1. noun A young shoot representing the current season's growth of a woody plant.
  2. noun Any small, leafless branch of a woody plant.
  3. transitive verb To observe or notice.
3 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (13)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (5)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • Madelyne let out a yelp when the slat of wood snapped like a twig, and would have made the sign of the cross if she'd been able to get her hands undone from each other. —  Garwood, Julie - Honor's Splendour
  • I fear Yvonne Strahovski's Sarah (right) will snap her like a twig, and that Adam Baldwin's Casey will pick up the splinters and use them as toothpicks. —  Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch
  • But, the thing that snaps me like a twig is the betrayal of our military men and women by the American electorate. —  AMERICAN DIGEST
  • The breaking of a twig was as the discharge of a rifle. —  Bamboo Tales
  • Didn't the Bible or somebody say: 'Just as the twig is bent the boy's inclined?' —  The Hoosier School-boy
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 113 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

bough ·  branch ·  moss ·  shrub ·  bark ·  thicket ·  foliage ·  stalk ·  bush ·  leaf ·  reed ·  vine

Used in the same contextWord Family

twig:   twigs ·  twigged
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (8)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. Middle English, from Old English twigge; see dwo- in Indo-European roots.
  2. Irish Gaelic tuigim, I understand, from Old Irish tuicim.
  3. Origin unknown.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (5)

  1. Middle English twig, twyg (plural twigges, twygges), with shortened vowel, earlier twig, twi (plural twiges), with long vowel, from Anglo-Saxon twig (plural twīgu) = Dutch twijg = Low German twich = Old High German zwīg, zwī, Middle High German zwīc (zwīg-), zwī, German zweig, a twig; perhaps, with a formative -g, orig. -j, from twi-, etc., two, with reference to a forked twig; cf. twissel, a forked twig, from the same source.
  2. from twig, n.
  3. A variant of twick, unassibilated form of twitch: see twick, twitch, and cf. tweak.
  4. from twig, v. Cf. twick, tweak, n.
  5. Prob, from Irish tuigim, I understand, discern, = Gaelic tuig, understand.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/twɪg/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word several times a year.

Recently looked up

quadruples · banal · BRYAN · microeconomic · hood

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Der dicke Dachdecker deckte dir dein Dach, drum dank dem dicken Dachdecker, dass der dicke Dachdecker dir dein Dach deckte. · weitläufig · und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute · redescheu · selbstverständlich