tweak
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /twiːk/
rhymes: -iːk
Forms: form: tweaks
form: tweaking
form: tweaked
form: tweaked
Etymology: From Middle English twikken, from Old English twiccian (“to pluck”), from Proto-West Germanic *twekkōn (“to fasten; clamp; pinch”). Related to twitch. The drug-related sense may be a blend of twitch and freak.
Senses: examples: text: to tweak the nose.
glosses: To pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch.
examples: text: If we tweak the colors towards blue, it will look more natural.
text: Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.[…]But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it.
ref: 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
text: Yet on January 10th, only weeks before the charter was due to come into force, the prime minister said his government was tweaking the draft.
ref: 2017 January 14, “Thailand's new king rejects the army's proposed constitution”, in The Economist:
glosses: To adjust slightly; to fine-tune.
examples: text: Oh, he loved to tweak people and say things like "Hiya sweetums" to me because that was not exactly de rigueur in front of a bunch of strong feminists. He had this enormous sense of humor. I never knew what he was going to say.
ref: 1995, Alida Brill, Feminist Press, A Rising Public Voice: Women in Politics Worldwide, Feminist Press at CUNY, page 177
text: I know what kinds of intervals and melodies tweak people—I know how to make people's skin crawl, how to make them shiver. I can't say it works on all listeners. There are some people, such as overly trained composers and theorists ...
ref: 2003, Ann McCutchan, The Muse that Sings: Composers Speak about the Creative Process, Oxford University Press on Demand, →ISBN, page 92:
text: “Russia needs leadership and he knows how to tweak people.” He grinned, “He made a convert of me,” chuckling. “I wanted to lead him by the hand, now I follow him like a puppy dog.”
ref: 2006, Clarence Rockey, Carlisle Trace President of the People, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 171:
text: But I know he likes to tweak people. For a while he was giving Colette, the receptionist, a hard time, until she learned to ignore him. But that ability that lets him see how to tweak people makes him a superb salesman.
ref: 2011, Sara J. Henry, Learning to Swim: A Novel, Crown, →ISBN, page 183:
glosses: To tease, to annoy; to get under the skin of (someone, typically so as to irritate them, or by extension to enamor, frighten, etc).
glosses: To abuse methamphetamines, especially crystal meth.
glosses: To exhibit extreme nervousness, evasiveness when confronted by authorities, compulsiveness, erratic motion, excitability, etc, due to or mimicking the symptoms of methamphetamine abuse.
examples: text: Am I tweaking or does 2020 feel like 6 months ago?
text: If you didn't think that was a good halftime show you're actually tweaking
ref: 2021 February 7, @iiKlemm, Twitter, archived from the original on 10 Jan 2024:
text: Some of yall gonna think im tweaking but FRONTIER>>>>>>HUENEME
ref: 2021 June 16, @j0syell, Twitter, archived from the original on 10 Jan 2024:
text: Am I tweaking or did twitter just go offline for 2.5 seconds🤔😅
ref: 2023 October 11, @Jus4president, Twitter, archived from the original on 10 Jan 2024:
text: are these the same color or am i just tweaking
ref: 2024 January 2, @postneptune, Twitter, archived from the original on 10 Jan 2024:
synonyms: trip
glosses: To be extremely confused; to have no clue what is happening.
topics: engineering
government
military
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
politics
tools
war
weaponry
glosses: From a catapult, to strike a target with a missile.
Derived terms: sense: drug abuser
word: tweaker
sense: drug abuse
word: tweaking
word: tweakery
word: tweak on
word: tweak out