Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A young shoot representing the current season's growth of a woody plant.
  • noun Any small, leafless branch of a woody plant.
  • noun The current style; the fashion.
  • intransitive verb To observe or notice.
  • intransitive verb To understand or figure out.
  • intransitive verb To be or become aware of the situation; understand.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To notice; observe narrowly; watch.
  • To comprehend; understand; perceive; discover.
  • To understand; see; “catch on.
  • noun In anatomy, one of the minute branches of a blood-vessel.
  • noun A small shoot of a tree or other plant; a small branch; a spray.
  • noun A divining-rod.
  • noun In ceramics, a thin strip of prepared clay used in modeling a pottery vessel, especially in the imitation basket work common in Leeds pottery.
  • To switch; beat.
  • To be vigorous or active; be energetic
  • To twitch; jerk.
  • noun A twitch; a jerk; a quick, sudden pull.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A small shoot or branch of a tree or other plant, of no definite length or size.
  • noun (Zoöl.) any one of several species of small beetles which bore into twigs of shrubs and trees, as the apple-tree twig borer (Amphicerus bicaudatus).
  • noun (Zoöl.) See Girdler, 3.
  • noun (Bot.) any rushlike plant of the genus Cladium having hard, and sometimes prickly-edged, leaves or stalks. See Saw grass, under Saw.
  • transitive verb colloq. To understand the meaning of; to comprehend; as, do you twig me?
  • transitive verb To observe slyly; also, to perceive; to discover.
  • transitive verb To beat with twigs.
  • transitive verb Obs. or Scot. To twitch; to pull; to tweak.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small thin branch of a tree or bush.
  • verb transitive To beat with twigs.
  • verb colloquial, regional To realise something; to 'catch on'.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb branch out in a twiglike manner
  • noun a small branch or division of a branch (especially a terminal division); usually applied to branches of the current or preceding year
  • verb understand, usually after some initial difficulty

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English twigge; see dwo- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps from Irish Gaelic tuig-, stem of tuigim, I understand, from Old Irish tuicim.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English twigge, from Proto-Germanic *twīgan (compare West Frisian twiich, Dutch twijg, German Zweig), from Proto-Indo-European *dwigha (compare Old Church Slavonic dvigŭ 'branch', Albanian degë 'id.'), from *dwó 'two'. More at two.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Irish and Scots Gaelic tuig, "to understand"

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Examples

Comments

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  • Irish slang: to understand, from the Gaelic verb "tuig", to understand

    February 23, 2007

  • I twigged it, knew it; had had the gift, might readily have prophesied it--for when I clapped my eye upon his skull I saw it.

    - Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 39

    July 25, 2008

  • Usage example on sachets of lexicographical magic dust.

    November 27, 2010

  • that twiggered petite pulverized pumice. Pulverized pumice is crushed, clear crystals. Is that crystal clear?

    November 27, 2010

  • Slang for a radio antenna.

    March 5, 2018