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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

twerp.

A fool, a twit.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/twɝp/General-American/twɜːp/Received-Pronunciation
  1. A fool, a twit.

    UK · colloquial
    Now you've broken it, you twerp!
  2. A small or puny person; one regarded as insignificant, contemptible.

    US · childish · colloquial
    Get out of my way, you little twerp!
  3. A person who can be bullied playfully, or easily teased. Sometimes used as a pet-name (often for a younger sibling).

    US · childish · colloquial
Where this word comes from

Of uncertain origin; originally British slang of the 1910s. In a letter, dated 6 October 1944, J. R. R. Tolkien mentions a contemporary of his at Oxford University T.W. Earp, calling him "the original twerp"; but no corroborating evidence for this etymology has come to light. Other suggestions include: a clipping of Antwerp (“type of racing pigeon that flew between Antwerp and London”); the onomatopoeic twirp (“imitation of the sound of a bird”); a dialectal variant of dwarf (compare Middle English dwerf); Welsh twp (“a fool”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.