twisting

Pluraltwistings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of twist.

   The vine kept twisting around the old fence post all summer.

   Workers were twisting the steel cables together by hand.

   Note

   The verb form behind the progressive tenses: with be it gives was twisting and are twisting, and on its own it can modify a noun, as in a rope twisting in the wind. It carries every sense of the verb, including the reflexive one of winding one's way in, as in twisting itself into a crack. The same spelling also serves as the verbal noun and the adjective for winding roads.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   Gerund of twist.

   The constant twisting of the cable eventually weakened it.

   A sharp twisting of the ankle caused her injury during the match.

   Note

   As a noun it takes a plural, twistings, and it likes company. Alexander Star's 2009 tribute to Richard Poirier traces Emerson's famous twistings and turnings, meaning the windings of a mind. Theodore Sizer pairs facial twistings with scrunchings. In engineering prose it stays singular and physical, set beside buckling as one way a structure can fail under force.

3. 3
   adjective

   Marked by many bends, turns, or curves along its length.

   The twisting staircase wound up to the top of the stone tower.

   A twisting mountain trail tested even the most experienced hikers.

   Similarwinding, tortuous, meandering, serpentine, zigzag

   Oppositestraight, direct

   Note

   A true adjective, not just a participle placed before a noun: it can be graded, and it compares with more rather than -er. A mountain road can be even more twisting than the valley road. That gradability separates it from the verb form, which describes an action in progress, while the adjective describes a lasting shape.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The disreputable practice of selling a customer insurance they don't need in order to earn a commission.

   Regulators cracked down on twisting after several customers complained about pointless new policies.

   He built his sales numbers through twisting, replacing perfectly good policies with useless ones.

   Note

   Insurance has its own vocabulary of misconduct, and this word names the agent's side of it. The motive is arithmetic. The Federal Reporter of 1985 explains that commission on a new policy is substantially higher than on the renewal of an existing one, so replacing a sound policy pays the agent and harms the customer. It is a mass noun with no plural, at home in legal and regulatory writing.

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