pretzel

Etymology

From dialectal German Pretzel, a variant of standard Brezel, from Old High German brēzitella, from Vulgar Latin *brāchiātellus, diminutive of Latin brāchium, bracchium (“arm”); named for the appearance of folded arms.

noun

  1. (cooking) A toasted bread or cracker usually in the shape of a loose knot.
  2. (by extension) Anything that is knotted, twisted, or tangled.

verb

  1. (transitive, Canada, US, informal) To bend, twist, or contort.
    They discovered a snake pretzelled into knots.

Attribution / Disclaimer All definitions come directly from Wiktionary using the Wiktextract library. We do not edit or curate the definitions for any words, if you feel the definition listed is incorrect or offensive please suggest modifications directly to the source (wiktionary/pretzel), any changes made to the source will update on this page periodically.