twitch

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To draw, pull, or move suddenly and sharply; jerk: I twitched my fishing line.
2. v. To move jerkily or spasmodically. See Synonyms at jerk¹.
3. v. To ache sharply from time to time; twinge.
4. n. A sudden involuntary or spasmodic muscular movement: a twitch of the eye.
5. n. A sudden pulling; a tug: The fish gave my line a twitch.
6. n. A looped cord used to restrain a horse by tightening it around the animal's upper lip.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To pull or draw with a hasty jerk; snatch; jerk away.
2. To give a short, sudden pull or tug at; jerk at; cause to move quickly or spasmodically.
3. To nip; squeeze; make fast; tie tightly.
4. To be suddenly jerked; move or contract quickly or spasmodically, as a muscle.
5. To carp; sneer; make flings. Compare jerk, intransitive verb, 2.
6. n. A short, sharp pull or tug; a jerk or snatch.
7. n. A short, spastic contraction of the fibers of muscles; a stitch; a twinge: as, a twitch in the side; convulsive twitches; especially, such a movement when causing pain: sometimes applied to moral pangs.
8. n. A pair of nippers or tweezers.
9. n. A noose attached to a stock or handle and twisted around the upper lip of a horse so as to bring him under command when shoeing or clipping: an instrument used for holding a vicious horse.
10. n. In mining, a sudden narrowing of a vein so that the walls come nearly or quite together.
11. A dialectal variant of touch.
12. n. The quitch or quitch-grass, Agropyrum repens. The name is also applied to the bent-grass, Agrostis vulgaris, and to a few other grasses, as the sheep's-fescue, Festuca ovina, called black twitch.

Wiktionary

1. n. A brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again; a spasm.
2. n. informal Action of spotting or seeking out a bird, especially a rare one.
3. n. 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.
4. v. intransitive To perform a twitch; spasm.
5. v. transitive To jerk sharply and briefly.
6. v. transitive To spot or seek out a bird, especially a rare one.
7. n. couch grass, a species of grass, often considered as a weed.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To pull with a sudden jerk; to pluck with a short, quick motion; to snatch.
2. n. The act of twitching; a pull with a jerk; a short, sudden, quick pull.
3. n. A short, spastic contraction of the fibers or muscles; a simple muscular contraction.
4. n. (Far.) 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. By twisting the stick the compression is made sufficiently painful to keep the animal quiet during a slight surgical operation.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. toss with a sharp movement so as to cause to turn over in the air
2. n. a sudden muscle spasm; especially one caused by a nervous condition
3. v. move or pull with a sudden motion
4. v. move with abrupt, seemingly uncontrolled motions
5. v. squeeze tightly between the fingers
6. v. make an uncontrolled, short, jerky motion