"twist someone's arm" meaning in English

See twist someone's arm in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-twist someone's arm.ogg [Australia] Forms: twists someone's arm [present, singular, third-person], twisting someone's arm [participle, present], twisted someone's arm [participle, past], twisted someone's arm [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} twist someone's arm (third-person singular simple present twists someone's arm, present participle twisting someone's arm, simple past and past participle twisted someone's arm)
  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: To apply torsion along the length of the arm of (a person).
    Sense id: en-twist_someone's_arm-en-verb-u90DM6tM Categories (other): &lit not valid pagename, English predicates Disambiguation of English predicates: 49 51
  2. (figuratively) To coerce, force, or cajole. Tags: figuratively Translations (to coerce): painostaa (Finnish), pakottaa (Finnish), forcer la main (French)
    Sense id: en-twist_someone's_arm-en-verb-L6ovBiuX Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with language name categories using raw markup, English predicates, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 45 55 Disambiguation of English entries with language name categories using raw markup: 24 76 Disambiguation of English predicates: 49 51 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 21 79 Disambiguation of 'to coerce': 5 95

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for twist someone's arm meaning in English (3.3kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "twists someone's arm",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "twisting someone's arm",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "twisted someone's arm",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
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    },
    {
      "form": "twisted someone's arm",
      "tags": [
        "past"
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  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "name": "en-verb"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "&lit not valid pagename",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "49 51",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English predicates",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2013, Justina Ireland, Vengeance Bound, Simon and Schuster, page 295",
          "text": "I twist his arm, a snap signaling when it breaks. His screams reverberate in the tiny apartment.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: To apply torsion along the length of the arm of (a person)."
      ],
      "id": "en-twist_someone's_arm-en-verb-u90DM6tM",
      "links": [
        [
          "torsion",
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    {
      "categories": [
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          "_dis": "45 55",
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "They had to twist his arm, but they got him to join the project.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Mark Gevisser, A Legacy of Liberation, St. Martin's Press, page 152",
          "text": "Either to sully his reputation or to twist his arm into further cooperation, the authorities slapped a second, unrelated charge onto his sheet: He was accused of defrauding his clients' trust funds of a few hundred dollars.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To coerce, force, or cajole."
      ],
      "id": "en-twist_someone's_arm-en-verb-L6ovBiuX",
      "links": [
        [
          "coerce",
          "coerce"
        ],
        [
          "force",
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        ],
        [
          "cajole",
          "cajole"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figuratively) To coerce, force, or cajole."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "5 95",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to coerce",
          "word": "painostaa"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "5 95",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to coerce",
          "word": "pakottaa"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "5 95",
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to coerce",
          "word": "forcer la main"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
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      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/2a/En-au-twist_someone%27s_arm.ogg/En-au-twist_someone%27s_arm.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/En-au-twist_someone%27s_arm.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "twist someone's arm"
}
{
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    "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
    "English lemmas",
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    "English predicates",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
    "English verbs"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "twists someone's arm",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "twisting someone's arm",
      "tags": [
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      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "twisted someone's arm",
      "tags": [
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        "past"
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    },
    {
      "form": "twisted someone's arm",
      "tags": [
        "past"
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    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "twist someone's arm (third-person singular simple present twists someone's arm, present participle twisting someone's arm, simple past and past participle twisted someone's arm)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2013, Justina Ireland, Vengeance Bound, Simon and Schuster, page 295",
          "text": "I twist his arm, a snap signaling when it breaks. His screams reverberate in the tiny apartment.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: To apply torsion along the length of the arm of (a person)."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "torsion",
          "torsion"
        ],
        [
          "arm",
          "arm"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "They had to twist his arm, but they got him to join the project.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Mark Gevisser, A Legacy of Liberation, St. Martin's Press, page 152",
          "text": "Either to sully his reputation or to twist his arm into further cooperation, the authorities slapped a second, unrelated charge onto his sheet: He was accused of defrauding his clients' trust funds of a few hundred dollars.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To coerce, force, or cajole."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "coerce",
          "coerce"
        ],
        [
          "force",
          "force"
        ],
        [
          "cajole",
          "cajole"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figuratively) To coerce, force, or cajole."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-twist someone's arm.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/2a/En-au-twist_someone%27s_arm.ogg/En-au-twist_someone%27s_arm.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/En-au-twist_someone%27s_arm.ogg",
      "tags": [
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  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to coerce",
      "word": "painostaa"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to coerce",
      "word": "pakottaa"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to coerce",
      "word": "forcer la main"
    }
  ],
  "word": "twist someone's arm"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.