twirl
UK/twɜːl//twɝl/
twirl noun: a movement where a person spins round elegantly; a pirouette.
Noun
twirl (plural twirls)
- A movement where a person spins round elegantly; a pirouette.
- Any rotating movement; a spin.
- The conductor gave his baton a twirl, and the orchestra began to play.
- When the cock had now crowed for the third time, and the little larks had made their first twirl in the sky, and the infant light appeared in solitary white streaks in the east, then it went hush, hush, hush, through the bushes, and flowers, and stalks; and the hills rang again, and opened, and the...1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 291
- A little twist of some substance; a swirl.
- Place the cream in a piping bag with a fairly large star pipe attached, fill each tartlet with a twirl of cream and top with a strawberry.1969, The South African Sugar Journal, volume 53, page 51
- A prison guard.
- Which was in the main childishness and pettiness, the reason for this was that most of the twirls and the governors had […]1958, Frank Norman, Bang to rights: an account of prison life, page 67
- Synonyms:
- screw
Verb
twirl (third-person singular simple present twirls, present participle twirling, simple past and past participle twirled)
- To perform a twirl.
- To rotate rapidly.
- See ruddy maids, / Some taught with dexterous hand to twirl the wheel.1753, Robert Dodsley, Agriculture
- No more beneath soft eve's consenting star / Fandango twirls his jocund castanet.1812, Lord Byron, “Canto I”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. A Romaunt, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […]; William Blackwood, Edinburgh; and John Cumming, Dublin; by Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC...
- To twist round.
- He inflated his chest, twirled his moustache, and thumped the table with a revulsion to thunderous indignation.1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 85
- Synonyms:
- twizzle
- To pitch.
- When the batteries were announced, however, and Herb Pennock of the Boston Red Sox, probably the best pitcher in all baseballdom, was named to twirl for the invading team, we felt we had been tricked.1949, Mark Raymond Murnane, Ground Swells: Of Sailors, Ships, and Shellac, page 302
twirl meaning in Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada and Sanskrit
twirl in Urdu
- گھمانا, مروڑنا, پیچ دینا, بل دینا
twirl in Malayalam
- ചുറ്റുക, വിരൽകൊണ്ട് വട്ടത്തിൽ കറക്കുക, ചുഴറ്റുക
twirl in Kannada
- ಗರಗರ ತಿರುಗು, ಸುತ್ತು, ಗರಗರನೆ ತಿರುಗು, ವೇಗವಾಗಿ ಸುತ್ತು
twirl in Sanskrit
- to twirl; to stir or whirl around
- मथ्नाति mathnā́ti, मन्थति mánthati
Examples of twirl in a sentence
- The villain began to cachinnate and twirl his moustache.
- She twirled the pencil through her fingers with impressive dexterity.
- She twirled around, her eyes blazing.
Synonyms of twirl
Forms of twirl
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | twirls |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | twirls |
| present participle | twirling |
| past participle | twirled |
| past | twirled |
Origin of twirl
Of Scandinavian origin, akin to Norwegian Nynorsk tvirla, Old High German dweran (German zwirlen, quirlen), Dutch dwarrelen and Icelandic þyrill; all from Proto-Germanic *þwirilaz (“stirring-stick, whisk”), *þweraną (“to stir”). Or, an alteration of tirl (“to twist”), with influence from whirl.
Words formed from twirl
Words that rhyme with twirl
Questions about twirl
- What does twirl mean?
- Twirl means a movement where a person spins round elegantly; a pirouette.
- What is twirl in Urdu?
- Twirl in Urdu is گھمانا, مروڑنا, پیچ دینا. See Twirl meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is twirl?
- Twirl can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce twirl?
- Twirl is pronounced /twɜːl/ (UK).
- What is the plural of twirl?
- The plural of twirl is twirls.
Words near twirl in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: twirl (page history and authors); twirl (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); twirl (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); twirl (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); मथ्नाति (Sanskrit) (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-twirl.ogg.
Cite this entry: “twirl.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/twirl. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.