Word.ws English Dictionary

writhed

writhed is the simple past and past participle of writhe.

Meaning of writhe

Verb

writhe (third-person singular simple present writhes, present participle writhing, simple past writhed or (archaic) wrothe, past participle writhed or (archaic) wrothe or (archaic) writhen)

  1. (transitive) To twist, wring (something).
  2. (transitive) To contort (a part of the body).
    • Cicero (as I remember) had gotten a custome to wryth his nose, which signifieth a naturall scoffer.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 17, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
  3. (intransitive) To twist bodily; to contort one's self; to be distorted.
    • The game was engulfed in controversy when Rodwell appeared to win the ball cleanly in a midfield challenge with Suarez. The tackle drew an angry response from Liverpool's players- Lucas in particular as Suarez writhed in agony - but it was an obvious injustice when the England Under-21 midfielder...2011 October 1, Phil McNulty, “Everton 0-2 Liverpool”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 06 Jan 2012
  4. (transitive) To extort.

See all 6 meanings of writhe

Questions about writhed

What is writhed the simple past and past participle of?
Writhed is the simple past and past participle of writhe.

Words near writhed in the dictionary

  1. writeups
  2. writh
  3. writh'd
  4. writh's
  5. writhe
  6. writhed
  7. writhedly
  8. writhen
  9. writheneck
  10. writher
  11. writhers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: writhed (page history and authors); writhe (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.

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Cite this entry: “writhed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/writhed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.