Twiddle

//ˈtwɪdəl// noun, verb

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A slight twist with the fingers.

    "He put away the receiver with a twiddle of pudgy fingers."

  2. 2
    a series of small (usually idle) twists or turns wordnet
  3. 3
    A wiggling movement.

    "Why should I agree that a twiddle of skirts from right to left and pointing a toe in one direction mean “He loves me,” while the reverse twiddle and the toe pointed in the opposite direction “He loves me not”?"

  4. 4
    A small decorative embellishment.

    "A great many fidgety occupations will come to an end: we shan’t put a pattern on a cloth or a twiddle on a jug-handle to sell it, but to make it prettier and to amuse ourselves and others."

  5. 5
    A small musical flourish.

    "“Oh, auntie,” she exclaims, “these great Goths of Englishmen put a twiddle into the last bar of the ‘Minstrel Boy,’ just fancy that!”"

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  1. 6
    A tilde.

    "For those places which feed input arcs leading to more than one transition, a “twiddle” symbol (e.g., ‘~’) may be used as the enabling predicate for one of the transitions."

  2. 7
    A drawn line that is curvy or twisted.

    "It will then be seen that the inscriptions are very nearly alike, but an expert in Arabic or Vedic writing would recognize at once that they differ in more respects than in having a “twiddle too much or a twiddle too little.”"

  3. 8
    A tiny bit.

    "Trying to tune in on your own face color is a bit like that: a twiddle too red, a twiddle too pale, and the whole image goes haywire."

  4. 9
    A tizzy.

    "Hey, diddle, diddle, we’re all in a twiddle, / Although we’re cuffed and we’re cuffed, / To be quite exact we cannot act, / For, you see, we are all of us stuffed."

Verb
  1. 1
    To wiggle, fidget or play with; to move around. transitive

    "She sat and nervously twiddled her hair while she waited."

  2. 2
    manipulate, as in a nervous or unconscious manner wordnet
  3. 3
    To flip or switch two adjacent bits (binary digits). transitive
  4. 4
    turn in a twisting or spinning motion wordnet
  5. 5
    To be in an equivalence relation with. transitive
Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    To play with anything; hence, to be busy about trifles. intransitive

Etymology

Etymology 1

Unknown. Perhaps a blend of twirl, twist, or twitch; fiddle.

Etymology 2

Unknown. Perhaps a blend of twirl, twist, or twitch; fiddle.

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