To writhe is to twist and turn your body from side to side, over and over, without being able to stop. It is what a body does when something is unbearable: pain most of all — "writhing in agony on the floor" is almost a set phrase — but also a snake or a worm moving, or a person twisting to get free of ropes or of someone holding them. It is an intransitive verb: you writhe, you do not writhe something. The usual patterns are writhe in pain / in agony, writhe on the ground, writhe around, writhe free. It is a vivid, literary word — you meet it in novels and news reports more than in daily talk; in conversation people say "rolling around" or "twisting". English also uses it for feelings, and this is where it earns its keep: to writhe with embarrassment or shame means the feeling is so strong it moves your body, that squirming you do remembering something awful you said years ago. That use is close to the more common "squirm", but writhe is stronger. Forms: writhe, writhed, writhed, writhing. Say it "RYTHE" — long i, silent w, and the th soft like in "breathe", not hard like in "think".

（因痛苦而）扭動身體、翻滾、掙扎扭動。台灣常見的講法是「痛得直打滾」「痛苦地扭動」；講情緒時像「尷尬到渾身不對勁」。