as in dwarf
a person of no importance or influence
in high school he was just a little twerp, and now he's a big Internet entrepreneur
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Recent Examples of twerp
Taking on classic buddy-comedy attributes, Sam is the together one with a programmatic path toward life as a wealthy but hollow finance twerp, while Ari is the brash, cracked, less-medicated-than-he-should-be bull in a china shop.
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Joe Reid, Vulture, 8 Sep. 2025
Most of the movie is a vaguely comical swipe at Napoleon in domestic life—an awkward lover, a jealous husband, an inveterate complainer, and in sum an annoying twerp.
—Kyle Smith, WSJ, 21 Nov. 2023
Kind of a little twerp, now and again.
—Ashley Fetters Maloy, Washington Post, 7 Nov. 2022
His Abigail is a perfect twerp, the peevish flipside to Pitt's Most Interesting Man in the World shtick.
—Leah Greenblatt, EW.com, 18 Mar. 2022
When Briggs leaves Lulu in a (cool, safe) car at night, an animal-rights twerp seeks to break a window with a rock to let in some air, until Briggs advises him why this would be a bad idea.
—Kyle Smith, National Review, 18 Feb. 2022
That’s the mystery and the magnetism of what the actor’s doing, and without it this Henry would merely be a Lancastrian twerp.
—BostonGlobe.com, 24 Oct. 2019
To that end, its supporting characters are vivid: One step above Travis in the FAM hierarchy is Cody (Théodore Pellerin), a type-A twerp with a masochistic streak.
—Judy Berman, Time, 20 Aug. 2019
The fear is that kids who habitually order Amazon's Alexa to read them a story or command Google's Assistant to tell them a joke are learning to communicate not as polite, considerate citizens, but as demanding little twerps.
—Robbie Gonzalez, WIRED, 11 May 2018
Recent Examples of Synonyms for twerp
Noun
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La Selva always had caymans, but only the less aggressive and less territorial dwarf and white species.—
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Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a dwarf galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major.—
Noun
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Professional athletes, however, aren’t nobodies.—
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More importantly, the narrative explores both sides of the conflict from the POV of grunts and 'nobodies' trying to navigate the post-Civil War state of the galaxy before the fighting stops.—
Noun
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The movie, which posits an impending nuclear strike on a major American city, is a flimsy yet high-minded piece of doomsday schlock, largely populated by ciphers in suits and drained of the pulp pleasures that schlock, at its best, can afford.—
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Such ciphers are easy to crack using techniques such as checking letter frequency and identifying common patterns.—
Noun
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The Samsonite Winfield 2 Hardside Expandable Checked Bag is a Travel + Leisure editor favorite, thanks to its lightweight yet durable shell.—
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This lightweight, nourishing oil helps support the skin’s microbiome while delivering deep hydration.—
Noun
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This damages the trunk and leaves an ugly, elongated canker that invites insects and stresses the tree, leading to stunted growth, sparse foliage, and stem dieback.—
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The insect chews through the layer, and eventually the damage is akin to putting a permanent tourniquet on the tree.—
Noun
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And the Sharks have no obvious replacement for him — no young whippersnapper in the pipeline ready for his moment.—
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And Markey has defeated whippersnapper-type political foes before.—
Cite this Entry
“Twerp.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/twerp. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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