Agitate vs Twitch - What's the difference?
agitate | twitch | Related terms |
To move with a violent, irregular action; as, the wind agitates the sea; to agitate water in a vessel.
(rare) To move or actuate.
:(Thomson)
To stir up; to disturb or excite; to perturb; as, he was greatly agitated.
To discuss with great earnestness; to debate; as, a controversy hotly agitated.
:(Boyle)
To revolve in the mind, or view in all its aspects; to contrive busily; to devise; to plot; as, politicians agitate desperate designs.
A brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again; a spasm.
(informal) Action of spotting or seeking out a bird, especially a rare one.
(farriery) A stick with a hole in one end through which passes a loop, which can be drawn tightly over the upper lip or an ear of a horse and twisted to keep the animal quiet during minor surgery.
To perform a twitch; spasm.
* (rfdate) — [http://www.mindspring.com/~randyhoward/new_page_6.htm]
* 1922 , (Margery Williams), (The Velveteen Rabbit)
*:Their feet padded softly on the ground, and they crept quite close to him, twitching their noses...
To jerk sharply and briefly.
* Alexander Pope
To spot or seek out a bird, especially a rare one.
* 1995 , Quarterly Review of Biology vol. 70 p. 348:
* 2003 , Mark Cocker, Birders: Tales of a Tribe [http://books.google.com/books?id=tv-Noj1Fvc0C], ISBN 0802139965, page 52:
* 2005 , Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch: One Man, One Continent, a Race Against Time [http://books.google.com/books?id=fWLmpqL4EMsC], ISBN 1741145287, page 119:
couch grass, Elymus repens ; a species of grass, often considered as a weed.
Agitate is a related term of twitch.
As verbs the difference between agitate and twitch
is that agitate is to move with a violent, irregular action; as, the wind agitates the sea; to agitate water in a vessel while twitch is to perform a twitch; spasm.As a noun twitch is
a brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again; a spasm or twitch can be couch grass, elymus repens ; a species of grass, often considered as a weed.agitate
English
(Webster 1913)Verb
(agitat)- ``Winds . . . agitate the air.'' --Cowper.
- The mind of man is agitated by various passions. --Johnson.
Synonyms
* move, shake, excite, rouse, disturb, distract, revolve, discuss, debate, canvassExternal links
* * * ----twitch
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) twicchen, from (etyl) twiccian, from (etyl) ).Noun
(es)- I saw a little twitch in the man's face, and knew he was lying.
Derived terms
* nervous twitchVerb
- "Why is it that you twitch whenever I say Faith?"
- to twitch somebody's sleeve for attention
- Thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear.
- "The Birdwatchers Handbook ... will be a clear asset to those who 'twitch' in Europe."
- "But the key revelation from twitching that wonderful Iceland Gull on 10 March 1974 wasn't its eroticism. It was the sheer innocence of it."
- "I hadn't seen John since I went to Adelaide to (unsuccessfully) twitch the '87 Northern Shoveler, when I was a skinny, eighteen- year-old kid. "