tweak
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: computing
cryptography
engineering
government
mathematics
military
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
politics
sciences
tools
war
weaponry
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.
Inflected forms:
form: tweaks
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: tweaking
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: tweaked
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: tweaked
pos: verb
tags: past
form: tweaks
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: to tweak the nose.
gloss: To adjust slightly; to fine-tune.
pos: verb
tags: informal
transitive
examples: If we tweak the colors towards blue, it will look more natural.
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.
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.
gloss: To tease, to annoy; to get under the skin of (someone, typically so as to irritate them, or by extension to enamor, frighten, etc).
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 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.
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 ...
“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.”
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.
gloss: To abuse methamphetamines, especially crystal meth.
pos: verb
tags: US
intransitive
slang
gloss: To exhibit extreme nervousness, evasiveness when confronted by authorities, compulsiveness, erratic motion, excitability, etc, due to or mimicking the symptoms of methamphetamine abuse.
pos: verb
tags: US
intransitive
slang
gloss: To be extremely confused; to have no clue what is happening.
pos: verb
tags: broadly
intransitive
slang
examples: Am I tweaking or does 2020 feel like 6 months ago?
If you didn't think that was a good halftime show you're actually tweaking
Some of yall gonna think im tweaking but FRONTIER>>>>>>HUENEME
Am I tweaking or did twitter just go offline for 2.5 seconds🤔😅
are these the same color or am i just tweaking
gloss: From a catapult, to strike a target with a missile.
pos: verb
tags: uncommon
gloss: A sharp pinch or jerk; a twist or twitch.
pos: noun
examples: a tweak of the nose
gloss: A slight adjustment or modification.
pos: noun
examples: He is running so many tweaks it is hard to remember how it looked originally.
gloss: Trouble; distress; tweag.
pos: noun
gloss: A prostitute.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
slang
examples: Thence to Bautree, as I came there,
 From the bushes near the lane, there
 Rush'd a tweak in gesture flanting
 With a leering eye, and wanton:
 But my flesh I did subdue it
 Fearing lest my purse should rue it.
gloss: Methamphetamine.
pos: noun
tags: slang
gloss: A single inhalation of cocaine.
pos: noun
tags: slang
gloss: An additional input to a block cipher, used in conjunction with the key to select the permutation computed by the cipher.
pos: noun
Derived words: retweak
tweakable
tweakage
tweakery
tweakified
tweakment
tweak on
tweak out
tweaky
tweak freak
tweak of the thumb
Translations: