Writhe
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A contortion. rare
- 2 The number of negative crossings subtracted from the number of positive crossings in a knot
- 1 To twist, wring (something). transitive
- 2 to move in a twisting or contorted motion, (especially when struggling) wordnet
- 3 To contort (a part of the body). transitive
"Cicero (as I remember) had gotten a custome to wryth his nose, which signifieth a naturall scoffer."
- 4 To twist bodily; to contort one's self; to be distorted. intransitive
"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 was shown the red card."
- 5 To extort. transitive
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"She would catch chafers and beetles and stick them on a pin, after which she would push a leaf or a bit of paper close enough for them to seize with their feet; for the pleasure of seeing them writhe and wriggle in their efforts to free themselves from the pins."
Etymology
From Middle English writhen, from Old English wrīþan, from Proto-West Germanic *wrīþan, from Proto-Germanic *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist, turn”), from Proto-Indo-European *wreyt- (“to twist, writhe”). Cognate with Middle Dutch writen (“to turn, twist”), dialectal German reiden (“to turn, twist, lace”), Danish vride (“to twist”), Swedish vrida (“to turn, twist, wind”), French rider (“to wrinkle, furrow, ruffle”, (< Germanic)). Compare also Lithuanian riēsti (“to unbend, wind, roll”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.