Twissel
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A double fruit or a pair of like things growing on a tree. rare
"16thC, George Turberville, The Louer, in 1810, Samuel Johnson (series editor & biographies), Alexander Chalmers (additional biographies), The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, Volume II, page 599, As from a tree we sundrie times espie / A twissell grow by Nature's subtile might / And beeing two, for cause they grow so nie / For one are tane, and so appeare in sight;"
- 2 That part of a tree where the branches separate from the trunk or bole; a fork. rare
- 1 Double; twofold. obsolete
Example
More examples"16thC, George Turberville, The Louer, in 1810, Samuel Johnson (series editor & biographies), Alexander Chalmers (additional biographies), The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, Volume II, page 599, As from a tree we sundrie times espie / A twissell grow by Nature's subtile might / And beeing two, for cause they grow so nie / For one are tane, and so appeare in sight;"
Etymology
From Middle English twisel, twisil, from Old English *twisel (“forked, double”), from Old English twisla (“confluence, junction”), from Proto-Germanic *twisilą (“fork, bifurcation”), from Proto-Indo-European *dwis- (“twice, in two”). Cognate with German Zwiesel (“fork”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.