From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishwrithewrithe /raɪð/ verb [intransitive] MOVE/CHANGE POSITIONto twist your body from side to side violently, especially because you are suffering painwrithe in pain/agony etc He lay writhing in pain.→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
writhe• I felt its coarse hairs prickle my neck ... Smell of wet earth ... My belly writhed.• Sarah was writhing in agony, clutching her leg.• And even though the little fellow stood stock still, his shadow heaved and twisted as some living creature writhing in unimaginable torment.• As he received each blow, he writhed on the floor and cried out.• Like an invertebrate, she writhed on the floor, trapped in the ruin of her own body.• Changez lay writhing on the floor, unable to get up.• Play was stopped twice in the first half as Estrada writhed on the ground in seemingly excruciating pain after making a save.• They fell into bed, and then he was writhing under her twitching hair.• Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing with fractured skulls or broken shoulders...writhe in pain/agony etc• He just curled up in a little ball and writhed in pain.• But soon after she was writhing in agony, her muscles racked with pain.• Police found the pair writhing in agony in the road.• A patient who is writhing in pain may harbor an intra-abdominal catastrophe.Origin writhe Old English writhan “to twist” 