twig

C2+ Topic:General Vocabulary

US /twɪɡ/ UK /twɪɡ/ See IPA manual

Meanings

1

noun
a small thin shoot growing from a branch or stem

A robin perched on the slender twig.

Thesaurus

Synonyms

1 noun · a small thin shoot growing... sprig shoot stickbranchletsprout

Word family

Forms twiggy

Derived forms twiggy

Related forms branch

Appears in

Proverbs (1)

See all

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree

Etymology

From Old English twig, twigge ('twig, branch, shoot'), from Proto-Germanic *twigga, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European base *dwo- ('two'), the original sense being a forked branch.

twig Old English *twigga Proto-Germanic *dwoh Proto-Indo-European

View etymology graph ->

Topics

General Vocabulary

External links

# twig

**Type:** Word
**Level:** C2+
**Part of speech:** noun
**IPA (US):** /twɪɡ/
**IPA (UK):** /twɪɡ/

## Meanings
1. a small thin shoot growing from a branch or stem

## Examples
- A robin perched on the slender twig.

## Synonyms
- sprig
- shoot
- stick
- branchlet
- sprout

## Derived Forms
- twiggy

## Related Forms
- branch

## Roots and Affixes
- Root: twig
- Root: *twigga
- Root: *dwoh

## Etymology
From Old English twig, twigge ('twig, branch, shoot'), from Proto-Germanic *twigga, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European base *dwo- ('two'), the original sense being a forked branch.

## AI Etymology
Twig comes from Old English twig, twigge ('twig, branch, shoot'), from Proto-Germanic *twigga, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European base *dwo- ('two'), the original sense being a forked branch. The historical chain includes Old English twig, Proto-Germanic *twigga, and Proto-Indo-European *dwoh. The quoted older senses, "twig, branch, shoot" and "two", supply the semantic anchors for twig. The formation is best read as borrowed: the word twig carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "a small thin shoot growing from a branch or stem". English derivatives include twiggy; related English forms include branch. The result is a noun and verb whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.

## Topics
- General Vocabulary

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