- 1轉圈、旋轉（輕快小巧的那種）；也指用手指捲轉東西——轉筆、捲頭髮、把義大利麵捲上叉子，都是 twirl。語感輕盈、帶點俏皮，不用在沉重或猛烈的旋轉上。
To twirl is to turn round and round quickly and lightly. The key is the feeling: a twirl is small, fast, and usually pretty or playful. A dancer twirls across the stage. A girl in a new dress twirls to make the skirt fly out. You can twirl on the spot, and that is the most common picture.
It also works with an object — you twirl something, meaning you spin it with your fingers or wrist. People twirl a pen while thinking, twirl an umbrella as they walk, twirl their hair round a finger when they are nervous or bored. Note that this is done with light, small movements, usually by hand. And there is a very useful food use: you twirl spaghetti round your fork.
As a noun, a twirl is one such turn: "She gave a little twirl." There is a British phrase, "give it a twirl", meaning to try something out, though it is not common.
Compare it with its neighbours, because that is where the meaning really lives. Spin is neutral and can be fast and violent. Whirl is bigger and wilder — leaves whirl in the wind. Turn is plain. Twirl is the light, controlled, often charming one. This is why you would not say a washing machine twirls, or that a car twirled off the road; those need spin. Twirl belongs to fingers, skirts, dancers and forks.
組成Probably from the old Nordic and Germanic word for stirring — the same family gave Icelandic þyrill and German quirlen, both about a stick you stir or whisk with. It may also have been pulled into shape by the older English word tirl (to twist), with whirl leaning on it from the side.
同家族的字
- whirlclosely related spinning word; whirl is bigger and wilder than twirl
原始詞典資料8 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
twirlnoun/twɜːl/
- 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.
- When the cock had now crowed for the third time, and the little larks had made their first twirl in the sky, and the infant light appeared in solitary white streaks in the east, then it went hush, hush, hush, through the bushes, and flowers, and stalks; and the hills rang again, and opened, and the little men went down.
- 3
A little twist of some substance; a swirl.
- Place the cream in a piping bag with a fairly large star pipe attached, fill each tartlet with a twirl of cream and top with a strawberry.
- 4
slangA prison guard.
- Which was in the main childishness and pettiness, the reason for this was that most of the twirls and the governors had […]
twirlverb/twɜːl/
- 1
To perform a twirl.
- 2
To rotate rapidly.
- See ruddy maids, / Some taught with dexterous hand to twirl the wheel.
- No more beneath soft eve's consenting star / Fandango twirls his jocund castanet.
- 3
To twist round.
- He inflated his chest, twirled his moustache, and thumped the table with a revulsion to thunderous indignation.
- 4
ball-gamesbaseballgamesTo pitch.
- When the batteries were announced, however, and Herb Pennock of the Boston Red Sox, probably the best pitcher in all baseballdom, was named to twirl for the invading team, we felt we had been tricked.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。