Main definitions of twit in English

: twit¹ twit² twit³

twit¹

noun

British informal

A silly or foolish person.
- ‘Both camps, according to White House insiders, are silly twits.’
- ‘He thought of them as the lowest of low in the class known as CTJN class, the ‘creeps, twits, jerks and nerds’ class.’
- ‘While I'd seen my fair share of mediocre upper middle-class twits leapfrog their contemporaries, I really believed that the results-driven media game was largely a meritocracy.’
- ‘But some of her descendants behave unacceptably, like the worst kind of upper class twits.’
- ‘I'm sure we can imagine the scene a hundred years on: ‘Yes, it used to be a nice old 16th century church but the insides were ripped out by some twits in 2004’.’
- ‘Three days after the Prime Minister's petulant sneer that only reactionary twits claim education standards have fallen comes pretty devastating evidence that this is indeed the case.’
- ‘Can you imagine seeing that familiar bunch of florid-faced twits gathering outside a rural bus operator's office to protest about the cut in regular services?’
- ‘And these twits think that it's heresy to be in favour of the free market or against the UN.’
- ‘The tragedy is that statisticians and pollsters take these pathetic twits seriously.’
- ‘He seems to know his job rather more thoroughly than the dumb twits who've been along so far.’
- ‘Now most of them look like hippies gone wrong or aged twits clinging to their youth.’
- ‘I admit as well that I hate bureaucratically obsessed twits.’
- ‘How can we, in Britain, refer to ourselves as a democracy, when we still allow a bunch of upper-class twits to rule the roost?’
- ‘None of these twits have done anything that they claimed they would do.’
- ‘In the good old days these guys would have been turned into a Monty Python skit about twits on parade.’
- ‘So, don't dismiss tennis as a sport for hot Russian babes and upper-class twits only.’
- ‘These twits have had an unchallenged run in the media for far too long already.’
- ‘There is no way I could have watched those two twits - talk about strange bedfellows, by the way - without heaving a brick through the TV set.’
- ‘The interviewer and the audience, if sincere, are twits.’
- ‘Now I've met enough pompous twits in my time to know one when I hear one.’
fool, idiot, ass, halfwit, nincompoop, blockhead, buffoon, dunce, dolt, ignoramus, cretin, imbecile, dullard, moron, simpleton, clod
View synonyms

Origin

1930s (earlier dialect, in the sense ‘talebearer’): perhaps from twit.

Pronunciation

twit

/twɪt/

Main definitions of twit in English

: twit¹ twit² twit³

twit²

verbtwits, twitting, twitted

[with object]informal

Tease or taunt (someone), especially in a good-humoured way.
‘her playmates could not twit her about her pigtail’
- ‘Three cheers therefore for the man, who a day later in The Times skilfully twitted his ignorant colleague.’
- ‘I like to twit my family somewhat, as this will show.’
- ‘A Rastafarian waving a flag twitted me as I pushed through the noisy crowd.’
- ‘This happens through their own interactions, and observing each other in interchanges with others - as at a tea stall, when the pair are twitted by their young co-passengers and forced to cook up stories of their honeymoon.’
- ‘When he twits them, he does it gently, affectionately.’
- ‘At least the gatherings gave you a chance to twit tame Jesuits about how you didn't believe in their God, but aren't-we-all-good-fellows-anyway.’
- ‘Before saying grace at the Seniors' annual dinner on Friday night, the priest twitted the new champion he'd played alongside earlier in the day.’