Green’s Dictionary of Slang

twerp n.

an idiot, a nincompoop.

1916		‘Bless ’Em All’ in C.H. Ward-Jackson Airman’s Song Book (1945) 3: There’s many an airman finished his time / And many a twerp signing on.
1925		in E. Wilson Twenties (1975) 175: He’s just a twirp!
1929		W.D. Edmonds Rome Haul 287: A little fat twerp chewing a cigar.
1937		R. Westerby Wide Boys Never Work (1938) 159: You’re too cocky by half, you little twirp.
1940		F.S. Fitzgerald ‘Teamed with Genius’ in Pat Hobby Stories (1967) 64: Some twirp from Chicago fell in the wind machine.
1943		R. Llewellyn None But the Lonely Heart 96: I might have knowed you have something bleeding sawney to say, you old twerp, you.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats viii: Some of the officers at the reinforcement depot are a lot of twirps.
1951		K. Amis letter 2 Dec. in Leader (2000) 266: There was more than a twinge of that Armenian twirp about him.
1959		S. Bellow Henderson The Rain King 23: Those twerps. Don’t they ever eat pork?
1959		I. & P. Opie Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 121: Whistle while you work, / Miss -- made a shirt, / Hitler wore it, / Goering tore it, / Wasn’t he a twerp?
1960		A. Seymour One Day of the Year II iii: You jumped-up little twerp.
1961		R.S. Close With Hooves of Brass 81: It was a pity that whiskered twirp Ziff had been in on the game.
1962		F. Norman Guntz 183: We parted thinking each other right twirps.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 319: Listen to that. Who pulled your chain, twirp.
1971		R.D. Pharr S.R.O. (1998) 127: The twerp was so harmless-looking.
1976		C. Dexter Last Seen Wearing in Second Morse Omnibus (1994) 436: And what did the old twerp have to say this time?
1985		A. Payne ‘Minder on the Orient Express’ Minder [TV script] 16: Brian Gamage. A flash little twerp from south of the water.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 229: Kitty suspected the twerp spoke perfect English.
1996		P. Temple Bad Debts (2012) [ebook] Silly buggers who didn’t like Jews or Ities or other kinds of wogs. Otherwise reasonably harmless twerps.
2000		Indep. Rev. 31 Jan. 20: Searching questions left the SDP candidate looking like a ‘twerp.’.
2005		L. Redhead Rubdown [ebook] I was angry at the little twerps but i was also scared.
2012		D. O’Donnell Locked Ward (2013) 3: I thought it would be cool and hip [...] It wasn’t. Twerp that I was.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Irish Fandango [ebook] ‘I don’t need it, ya twerp’.
2014		T. Richardson ‘The Proxy’ in ThugLit Sept. [ebook] ‘I'm a hell of a lot stronger than you think. You… you no good twerp’.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 29: He’s a nebbish and a shaggy-haired twerp.

In derivatives

twerpy (adj.)

foolish, idiotic.

1965		R.L. Pike Mute Witness (1997) 141: A real twerpy guy.
1985		J. Briskin Too Much Too Soon (1986) 292: It bugs you that I spoke to that twerpy religious fanatic?
2006		D. Mitchell Black Swan Green 125: Mrs Thatcher frazzled this twerpy prat in a bow tie on BBC1.