A verb describing writhing motion, whether in labor pains, dance, or anguish. In Ezekiel's oracle against Egypt, cities will 'writhe' when judgment comes. The root spans multiple contexts: birth-labor, whirling dance, and pain-induced contortions. Here the imagery is distress—cities personified as women writhing in agony when divine judgment strikes. The verb's semantic range from celebration to suffering shows how physical motion expresses interior states across the spectrum from joy to terror.