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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

twirl.

A movement where a person spins round elegantly; a pirouette.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/twɜːl/Received-Pronunciation/twɝl/General-American/twøːl/New-Zealand, Wales/twɪɾl/Scotland
  1. A movement where a person spins round elegantly; a pirouette.

  2. Any rotating movement; a spin.

    The conductor gave his baton a twirl, and the orchestra began to play.
  3. A little twist of some substance; a swirl.

  4. A prison guard.

    slang
Where this word comes from

Of Scandinavian origin, akin to Norwegian Nynorsk tvirla, Old High German dweran (German zwirlen, quirlen), Dutch dwarrelen and Icelandic þyrill; all from Proto-Germanic *þwirilaz (“stirring-stick, whisk”), *þweraną (“to stir”). Or, an alteration of tirl (“to twist”), with influence from whirl.

verb/twɜːl/Received-Pronunciation/twɝl/General-American/twøːl/New-Zealand, Wales/twɪɾl/Scotland
  1. To perform a twirl.

    intransitive
  2. To rotate rapidly.

    transitive
  3. To twist round.

    transitive
  4. To pitch.

Where this word comes from

Of Scandinavian origin, akin to Norwegian Nynorsk tvirla, Old High German dweran (German zwirlen, quirlen), Dutch dwarrelen and Icelandic þyrill; all from Proto-Germanic *þwirilaz (“stirring-stick, whisk”), *þweraną (“to stir”). Or, an alteration of tirl (“to twist”), with influence from whirl.

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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.