torque

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

• noun A collar, a necklace, or an armband made of a strip of twisted metal, worn by the ancient Celts and Germans.
• noun The measure of a force's tendency to produce torsion or rotation about an axis, equal to the product of the force vector and the radius vector from the axis of rotation to the point of application of the force; the moment of a force.
• noun A turning or twisting force.
• transitive verb To impart torque to.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A twisted ornament forming a necklace or collar for the neck, particularly one worn by uncivilized people, and of such a make as to retain its rigidity and circular form. Such a collar was considered a characteristic attribute of the ancient Gauls. Also torques.
• noun In mech., the moment of a system-force applied so as to twist anything, as a shaft in machinery.
• noun A proposed unit for the measurement of the moment of forces; one dyne acting with a lever-arm of one centimeter. See unit of torque.

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

• noun A collar or neck chain, usually twisted, especially as worn by ancient barbaric nations, as the Gauls, Germans, and Britons.
• noun (Mech.) That which tends to produce torsion; a couple of forces.
• noun (Phys. Science) A turning or twisting; tendency to turn, or cause to turn, about an axis.

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

• noun A tightly braided necklace or collar, often made of metal, worn by various early European peoples.
• noun physics, mechanics A rotational or twisting effect of a force; a moment of force, defined for measurement purposes as an equivalent straight line force multiplied by the distance from the axis of rotation (SI unit newton-metre or Nm; imperial unit foot-pound or ft.lbf).
• verb To twist or turn something.

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

• noun a twisting force