twig

A small thin branch of a tree or bush.

They used twigs and leaves as a base to start the fire.

A beech wood with silver firs in it rolled down the face of the hill, and the maze of leafless twigs and dusky spires cut sharp against the soft blueness of the evening sky.

Somebody, or one of their body parts, not looking developed.

You need to find a source of motivation and play off of that. Whether it be the jock in high school that always called you fat, or the guy who picked on you and called you a twig.

Schwarzenegger was long past his professional bodybuilding days when he and Carrere shot the tango scene, but he wasn’t a twig.

To beat with twigs.

To realise something; to catch on; to recognize someone or something.

He hasn't twigged that we're planning a surprise party for him.

I pray you now send me some dub, / A bottle or two to the needy. / I beg you won't bring it yourself, / The harman is at the Old-Bailey; / I'd rather you'd send it behalf, / For, if they twig you they'll nail you.

To be realized and understood; to click.

Dries had told us to bring at least twenty litres of water because there was no water in camp and very few tourists stayed there. I knew I wouldn't get a shower for three days, but I wasn't worried about that. It hadn't twigged that the reason we needed to bring our own water was that the camp itself was a warzone.

As the photographer took a couple of preliminary photographs of Mandy, Marcus seized the moment. He knelt behind her. When Mandy turned around, she was initially confused. Then it twigged – he was proposing.

To understand the meaning of (a person); to comprehend.

Do you twig me?

To observe slyly; also, to perceive; to discover.

Now twig him; now mind him: mark how he hawls his muscles about.

This excellent man appears to have sunk into himself in a sitting posture, […] while his exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, held a little on one side, twinkles at you with the shrewdest complacency, as if he were looking right into your eyes and twigged something there which you had half a mind to conceal from him.