twig
/twɪɡ/
twig noun: a small thin branch of a tree or bush.
Noun
twig (plural twigs)
- A small thin branch of a tree or bush.
- They used twigs and leaves as a base to start the fire.
- A beech wood with silver firs in it rolled down the face of the hill, and the maze of leafless twigs and dusky spires cut sharp against the soft blueness of the evening sky.1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC
- Somebody, or one of their body parts, not looking developed.
- You need to find a source of motivation and play off of that. Whether it be the jock in high school that always called you fat, or the guy who picked on you and called you a twig.2007 February 24, Matt Weik, CSCS, “Successful Tips and Tricks For Contest Prep!”, in Bodybuilding.com, archived from the original on 16 Feb 2024
- Schwarzenegger was long past his professional bodybuilding days when he and Carrere shot the tango scene, but he wasn’t a twig.2022 July 19, Jason Rossi, “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Most Dangerous Mistake on ‘True Lies’: ‘It Would Have Put Us Back 30 Days in the Production’”, in Showbiz CheatSheet
Verb (1)
twig (third-person singular simple present twigs, present participle twigging, simple past and past participle twigged)
- To beat with twigs.
Verb (2)
twig (third-person singular simple present twigs, present participle twigging, simple past and past participle twigged)
- To realise something; to catch on; to recognize someone or something.
- He hasn't twigged that we're planning a surprise party for him.
- I pray you now send me some dub, / A bottle or two to the needy. / I beg you won't bring it yourself, / The harman is at the Old-Bailey; / I'd rather you'd send it behalf, / For, if they twig you they'll nail you.1765, “A Song in High Life”, in The Merry Medley, volume 1, London: W. Hoggard, page 35
- Synonyms:
- clock
- To be realized and understood; to click.
- Dries had told us to bring at least twenty litres of water because there was no water in camp and very few tourists stayed there. I knew I wouldn't get a shower for three days, but I wasn't worried about that. It hadn't twigged that the reason we needed to bring our own water was that the camp...2009, Tammie Matson, Elephant Dance
- As the photographer took a couple of preliminary photographs of Mandy, Marcus seized the moment. He knelt behind her. When Mandy turned around, she was initially confused. Then it twigged – he was proposing.2023 October 26, Francesca Street, “Two strangers moved into an apartment in Prague. Then they fell in love”, in CNN Travel
- To understand the meaning of (a person); to comprehend.
- Do you twig me?
- Synonyms:
- fathom, figure out, grasp, ken, work out
- To observe slyly; also, to perceive; to discover.
- Now twig him; now mind him: mark how he hawls his muscles about.1763, Samuel Foote, The Mayor of Garratt, act 2
- This excellent man appears to have sunk into himself in a sitting posture, […] while his exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, held a little on one side, twinkles at you with the shrewdest complacency, as if he were looking right into your eyes and twigged something there which you had half a mind...1863, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Our Old Home
Verb (3)
twig (third-person singular simple present twigs, present participle twigging, simple past and past participle twigged)
twig meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
twig in Hindi
- twig, branch
- टहनी ṭahnī
- twig, branch, bough
- शाखा śākhā
twig in Tamil
- a small thin branch
- சுள்ளி cuḷḷi
twig in Urdu
- ٹہنی, بھانپ لینا, سمجھ جانا, تاڑ جانا
twig in Bengali
- ডাল, ছোটো শাখা
More languagesFewer languages
- twig in Telugu
- రెమ్మ remma
- twig in Malayalam
- ചുള്ളി cuḷḷi
- twig in Kannada
- ಸೆಳೆ, ಸೆಳ್ಳು, ಪುಳ್ಳೆ, ಅಡರು
- twig in Assamese
- ঠানি thani, ঠালি thali, ডালি dali
- twig in Tagalog
- siit, gangaw, sangay
- twig in Arabic
- غُصَّيْن ḡuṣṣayn
- twig in Malay
- ranting
- twig in Persian
- ترکه tarke
- twig in Thai
- กิ่ง gìng
- twig in Vietnamese
- cành, nhánh
Examples of twig in a sentence
- I twigged him at once, by the description you gave me.1915, “Putting on the Screw”, in Caught in the Net, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, translation of Les Esclaves de Paris by Émile...
- Well, with fewer people doing two or three times the work, you may have already twigged to this.2012 May 30, John E. McIntyre, “A future for copy editors”, in Baltimore Sun, archived from the original on 23 Jun 2013:
- Eventually, someone twigged to the fact that absolutely nobody else could see so much as a seagull, let alone any exceptionally-lost Japanese torpedo boats.2019 March 13, Drachinifel, 18:23 from the start, in The Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron - Voyage of the Damned, archived from the original on...
- It hadn't twigged that the reason we needed to bring our own water was that the camp itself was a warzone.2009, Tammie Matson, Elephant Dance:
Synonyms of twig
Forms of twig
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | twigs |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | twigs |
| present participle | twigging |
| past participle | twigged |
| past | twigged |
Origin of twig
PIE word *dwóh₁ Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *twīgą Proto-West Germanic *twīg Old English twiġ Middle English twig English twig From Middle English twig, twyg, twigge, twygge, from Old English twigg, twicg, from Proto-West Germanic *twiggu (“small twig, shoot”), apparently a diminutive of Proto-West Germanic *twig (“branch, twig”) (whence also Old English twiġ and twiġa), from Proto-Germanic *twīgą, from Proto-Indo-European *dwigʰom, from *dwóh₁. More at two. Cognates Cognate with North Frisian twiich, twiig (“twig”), Saterland Frisian Twiech (“branch, twig”), West Frisian twiich (“twig”), Dutch twijg (“twig”), German Zweig (“branch, twig; section”), German Low German Twieg (“branch, twig”), Luxembourgish Zwäig (“twig”), Yiddish צווײַג (tsvayg, “branch”); also Old Church Slavonic двигъ (dvigŭ, “branch”), Albanian degë (“branch”).
Possibly from Irish and Scottish Gaelic tuig (“to understand”).
Compare tweak.
Words formed from twig
- a twig in a bundle cannot be broken
- a twig in a bundle is unbreakable
- battle-twig
- fall off the twig
- hop the twig
- in prime twig
- limetwig
- lime-twig
- Macaya green twig anole
- off one's twig
- one can't break a twig in a bundle
- one cannot break a twig in a bundle
- redtwig
- twig and berries
- twigful
- twiggen
- twigger
- twiggy
- twigless
- twiglet
- twiglike
- twig rune
- twig snake
- twigsome
- twig wilter
- twigwork
- undertwig
- you can't break a twig in a bundle
- you cannot break a twig in a bundle
Phrases with twig
- lime twig
- twig runes
- twig snakes
- twig wilters
- hops the twig
- hopped the twig
- hopping the twig
- fell off the twig
- falls off the twig
- fallen off the twig
- falling off the twig
- Macaya green twig anoles
1 more phrasesFewer phrases
Words that rhyme with twig
Questions about twig
- What does twig mean?
- Twig means a small thin branch of a tree or bush.
- What is twig in Hindi?
- Twig in Hindi is टहनी (ṭahnī), शाखा (śākhā). See Twig meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use twig in a sentence?
- I twigged him at once, by the description you gave me.
- What part of speech is twig?
- Twig can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce twig?
- Twig is pronounced /twɪɡ/ (US).
- What is the plural of twig?
- The plural of twig is twigs.
Words near twig in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: twig (page history and authors); टहनी (Hindi) (page history and authors); twig (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); twig (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); twig (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-twig.ogg.
Cite this entry: “twig.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/twig. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.