Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also twitface) a fool, an idiot [-face sfx].

[a.1661		‘An Answer to a Love-Elegy’ in Rump Poems and Songs (1662) i 52: Next come those idle Twittle-twats, / Which calls me many God-knows-whats].
1896		G.F. Northall Warwickshire Word-Book 252: Twit. [...] ‘You are a twit.’.
1941		G. Kersh They Die with Their Boots Clean 195: Hi, you, you twit! Pour these out agen.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 130: Fools of one kind and another have carved a considerable niche for themselves in Australian speech and little explanation is needed for any of the following: lardhead, loop, nit, plat (a clipping from platypus), quoit, hoon, tonk [etc].
1959		F. Norman Fings II i: Who’s gonna save the soppy little twits.
1968		P. Terson Apprentices (1970) II iii: Thomas, you twit! Poetry! Anyway Dylan was there.
1970		B. Naughton Alfie Darling 198: You’re a real hot little lustbox, ain’t you, Twitface.
1973		P. Wilson N.Z. Jack 139: ‘I won’t be dictated to,’ Lorna said. ‘Bloody twit.’.
1980		R. Dahl Twits (1982) 10: He was born a twit. And now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever.
1983		D. Marechera in House of Hunger (2013) [ebook] I was my father when some sixteen year old twit, white twit, insulted him.
1986		R.G. Barrett Godson 207: ‘They were a bunch of twits’.
1990		R.G. Barratt ‘Duck It’s the Silly Season’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] It’s nothing more than a sadistic bloody slaughter by a crowd of twits.
1999		Observer Screen 20 June 10: Terry Thomas playing upper class twit and bounder.
2005		Guardian Weekend 2 Apr. 25: In your heart of hearts, you always know when you look a twit.
2012		IOL Cape Western News (SA) 14 Feb. 🌐 Sorry, but they remain a bunch of twits.
2023		Rayman & Blau Riker’s 210: The doctor was a fucking twit.

2. a state of excitement or anxiety.

1947

N. Streatfeild Grass in Piccadilly 107: Proper twit she’s in.

3. (gay) an effeminate male homosexual.

1965		A. James America’s Homosexual Underground 123: He tells me he’s got a little twit he’s interested in.
1979		Maledicta III:2 221: Effeminates are called many abusive names even within their own (homosexual) culture, from bitch to fluff to twit.