Twitch

How to spell twitch

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce twitch

What does twitch mean?

1. verbTo make a small, sharp, often involuntary movement.
2. nounA short, sudden movement of a muscle or part of the body.

Twitch in a sentence

• verb

  Tiredness can make your eyelid twitch for hours.

• noun

  A nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth gave away his anxiety.

• verb

  The rabbit's nose began to twitch at the scent of food.

• noun

  The doctor noticed a slight twitch in her left hand.

Where does twitch come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Twitch comes from the Middle English verb twicchen, meaning to pull, pluck, or move with a sudden sharp jerk. It descends from an unrecorded Old English form related to twiccian, meaning to pluck out, and it belongs to a wider Germanic family of words built on a root sense of pulling or snatching quickly; the related Old High German gizwickan meant to pinch or nip. The earliest English uses described a deliberate sharp tug, such as plucking a hair or jerking a rope, and only later did the word settle into its modern meaning of a small involuntary or nervous movement of a muscle. The spelling kept its blunt Germanic shape, with the tw- opening and the -tch cluster echoing the abrupt, clipped action the word names. Its close relative tweak, also meaning to give a sharp little pull, springs from the very same root, which is a handy memory link.

How the word is built

• twitch (from Middle English twicchen: to pluck or pull sharply); a single unanalysable root with no separable prefix or suffix