(v. i.) To twist about briskly with contor/ions like an eel or a worm; to wriggle; to writhe.
Example Sentences:
(1) The talk coming from senior Tories – at least some of whom have the grace to squirm when questioned on this topic – suggesting that it's all terribly complicated, that it was a long time ago and that even SS members were, in some ways, themselves victims, is uncomfortably close to the kind of prattle we used to hear from those we called Holocaust revisionists.
(2) He cut in and provided a pass for Sneijder, whose shot squirmed wide off Rodríguez; he then clipped a ball in that just evaded Sneijder; and soon after that he appealed for another penalty.
(3) And yet for all his anti-establishment credentials, Mr Galloway is as practised as any of his New Labour enemies at squirming away from awkward questions.
(4) If the thought of eating fermented cabbage makes you squirm, then perhaps you're not ready for it – but plenty of others are.
(5) The Spurs were missing simple shots but insidiously squirmed their way back into the game, with James returning to Earth and Leonard in fine shooting form.
(6) But it squirms about conceding them to people it does not approve of.
(7) [Parkinson's] makes me squirm and it makes my pants ride up so my socks are showing and my shoes fall off and I can't get the food up to my mouth when I want to."
(8) President Andrzej Duda and Beata Szydło, the prime minister, take their orders from him and squirm for his approval.
(9) He could only squirm in the stands as Robbie Keane lofted the clearest chance of the game into the face of Mark Schwarzer, who also foiled Kuyt and Torres.
(10) Bodies squirmed with the embarrassment of eye contact and personal honesty.
(11) But the wording was left deliberately ambiguous and before the ink was dry on the statement, senior German officials, being grilled in Brussels by gobsmacked German journalists, were squirming and heavily qualifying the promise to shore up banks directly.
(12) In the last photos of her, taken barely 10 minutes before the Russian bombs landed, she shows off a new bracelet and freshly painted nails with glee, then squeezes a kiss from her squirming baby sister.
(13) For Cahun was a writer, first and foremost – and no amount of artistic squirming could change that.
(14) The Friday afternoon audience for the film of John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars was squirming with more anticipation than any audience I’ve seen since the first screening of Endless Love in July 1981.
(15) From the rebound, Lennon's shot deflected off Colback, hit the post and squirmed to safety.
(16) But corporations, which thrive on their sense of power and control, hate nothing more than having to say sorry unless they are forced to do so because they are squirming on the end of a hook for doing something particularly reprehensible.
(17) With five minutes remaining Aleksandar Kolarov took aim from outside the area and hit the attempt straight at Jonathan Bond, only for the ball to squirm under the goalkeeper and into the net.
(18) A Russia free-kick from just inside the halfway line lands evades a Spanish defender and land at Pavlychenko's feet about eight yards out, but he squirms his shot just wide.
(19) Team Miliband squirms a bit at this, not entirely sure if it might not be so.
(20) Branson has even smoked weed with Sam, a revelation that continues to make his son squirm.
Twitch
Definition:
(v. t.) To pull with a sudden jerk; to pluck with a short, quick motion; to snatch; as, to twitch one by the sleeve; to twitch a thing out of another's hand; to twitch off clusters of grapes.
(n.) The act of twitching; a pull with a jerk; a short, sudden, quick pull; as, a twitch by the sleeve.
(n.) A short, spastic contraction of the fibers or muscles; a simple muscular contraction; as, convulsive twitches; a twitch in the side.
(n.) 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. By twisting the stick the compression is made sufficiently painful to keep the animal quiet during a slight surgical operation.
Example Sentences:
(1) Comparison of the S100 alpha-binding protein profiles in fast- and slow-twitch fibers of various species revealed few, if any, species- or fiber type-specific S100 binding proteins.
(2) Twitch-tetanus ratios were calculated and found not to be related to unit contraction time.6.
(3) Hyperosmolar buffer slightly increased the sensitivity and maximal response to methacholine as well as the cholinergic twitch to electric field stimulation.
(4) The present results suggest that TMB-8 blocks twitches by preventing the release of Ca++ ions bound to the intracellular surface of the t-tubular membrane which is often called the store of 'trigger-calcium' ions.
(5) The twitches elicited by 0.1 msec pulses were abolished by tetrodotoxin, but were not reduced by dimethyltubocurarine or by hexamethonium.
(6) Starting from the observation that the part above 6 Hz of the power spectrum of force tremor during isometric contractions can be related to the unfused twitches of motor units firing asynchronously, an attempt was made to study the usefulness of force tremor spectral analysis as a global descriptor of motoneurone pool activity.
(7) The soleus, deep portions of the vastus lateralis, and superficial portions of the vastus lateralis muscles were examined to represent slow-twitch-oxidative, fast-twitch-oxidative-glycolytic, and fast-twitch-glycolytic skeletal muscle fiber types, respectively.
(8) Epinephrine potentiates muscle twitches via the second messenger, cAMP, secondary to hormone binding to membrane-bound beta-receptors.
(9) In physiological studies CDS mimics clonidine's action as an inhibitor of the electrically induced twitch response and as a partial agonist of the epinephrine-induced platelet aggregation.
(10) Facial twitch was followed by the generalized convulsion, further progressing to trembling of the limbs and then kicking of the hindlimb (full seizure) after 55 days of age.
(11) Stimulating the dorsal root at L5 was found to produce hindleg twitches in EAE rats with complete hindlimb paralysis.
(12) The anesthesiologist assessed the degree of neuromuscular blockade intraoperatively prior to pharmacologic reversal either by the standard method of visually counting the number of evoked thumb twitches elicited by supramaximal train-of-four stimulation of the ulnar nerve (i.e., thumb train-of-four count), or by an alternative method such as 1) visually counting the number of evoked orbicularis oculi muscle twitches elicited by supramaximal train-of-four stimulation of the facial nerve, or 2) observing the patient for clinical evidence of partial recovery (e.g., swallowing or attempts to breathe).
(13) Measurements of mouth opening were made for up to 10 min after loss of the adductor pollicis twitch and cessation of muscle fasciculations.
(14) On the other hand, the lack of any twitch-potentiating effect by naloxone methylbromide, a quaternary derivative of naloxone, suggests that opioids which potentiate the twitch must enter the lipid phase of the membrane to act.
(15) The relaxant effect of catecholamines on the twitch is temperature and rate dependent.
(16) Disopyramide 5 X 10(-5) - 10(-3) mol litre-1 produced a concentration-dependent reduction of twitch amplitude in the indirectly stimulated chick biventer cervicis preparation, but greater concentrations were required to reduce twitches elicited directly in the presence of erabutoxin-b 1 microgram ml-1.
(17) The pigeon's metapatagialis muscle consists of three slips, two twitch and one tonic, and these slips are distinguishable at the gross anatomical level.
(18) There was a good correlation between the two methods of measurement for both twitch height and train-of-four ratio (correlation coefficients 0.93 and 0.97, respectively).
(19) Head twitches induced by 1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodophenyl)-2-aminopropane (DOI) could be abolished by low doses of RP 62203 in mice (ED50 = 0.44 mg kg-1, p.o.)
(20) Chronic stimulation of the denervated SOL resulted in twitch times-to-peak and half-relaxation times that varied in a graded manner between values longer than those in the normal SOL to values as fast as those in the normal EDL, depending upon the pattern used.