Other forms: threw, thrown, throwing, throws
To throw is to send something flying through the air with your arm. Throw a ball, throw it over, throw it away.
The past tense is threw and the participle thrown. The phrasal verbs are everywhere: throw away, throw out, throw up meaning to vomit, throw in meaning to add, throw off meaning to escape. Figuratively, to throw somebody is to disconcert them: the question threw me. Note throw a party; throw in the towel, meaning to give up; and throw the baby out with the bathwater.
1verbthrowTo send something flying through the air with your arm.
“Throw the ball to the dog, and he'll bring it back.”
2verbdisconcertTo disconcert somebody.
“The second question threw her completely.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
throw is a sending through the air.
Old English thrawan meant to twist or turn, not to hurl — the same root as throe and, at a distance, thread. The modern sense comes from the twisting motion of the body rather than the flight of the object.
Proto-Indo-European
*terh₁- — to rub, rub by twisting, twist, turn
Proto-Germanic
*þrēaną — to twist, turn
Proto-West Germanic
*þrāan
Old English
þrāwan — to turn, twist
Middle English
throwen
English, today
throw
From Middle English throwen, thrawen, from Old English þrāwan (“to turn, twist”), from Proto-West Germanic þrāan, from Proto-Germanic þrēaną (“to twist, turn”), from Proto-Indo-European terh₁- (“to rub, rub by twisting, twist, turn”). Cognate with Scots thraw (“to twist, turn, throw”), West Frisian triuwe (“to push”), Dutch draaien (“to turn”), Low German draien, dreien (“to turn (in a lathe)”), German drehen (“to turn”). warp as the word for hurling and was warp as the word for twisting.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA