tweak
/twiːk/
tweak verb: to pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch.
Verb
tweak (third-person singular simple present tweaks, present participle tweaking, simple past and past participle tweaked)
- To pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch.
- to tweak the nose.
- To adjust slightly; to fine-tune.
- 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...2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847
- To tease, to annoy; to get under the skin of (someone, typically so as to irritate them, or by extension to enamor, frighten, etc).
- 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.1995, Alida Brill, Feminist Press, A Rising Public Voice: Women in Politics Worldwide, Feminist Press at CUNY, page 177
- 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 ...2003, Ann McCutchan, The Muse that Sings: Composers Speak about the Creative Process, Oxford University Press on Demand, →ISBN, page 92
- To abuse methamphetamines, especially crystal meth.
- To exhibit extreme nervousness, evasiveness when confronted by authorities, compulsiveness, erratic motion, excitability, etc, due to or mimicking the symptoms of methamphetamine abuse.
- To be extremely confused; to have no clue what is happening.
- 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 tweaking2021 February 7, @iiKlemm, Twitter, archived from the original on 10 Jan 2024
- Synonyms:
- trip
- From a catapult, to strike a target with a missile.
Noun
tweak (plural tweaks)
- A sharp pinch or jerk; a twist or twitch.
- a tweak of the nose
- A slight adjustment or modification.
- He is running so many tweaks it is hard to remember how it looked originally.
- Trouble; distress; tweag.
- A prostitute.
- 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.1638, Richard Brathwait, edited by Thomas Gent, Barnabae Itinerarium; or Drunken Barnaby's four journeys to the north of England: In Latin and English metre, published 1852, page 113
- Thence to Bautree, as I came there,
- Methamphetamine.
- A single inhalation of cocaine.
- An additional input to a block cipher, used in conjunction with the key to select the permutation computed by the cipher.
tweak meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada
tweak in Tamil
- வேகமாக திருக்கு, தேவைபடி மாற்று
tweak in Urdu
- نوچنا, پھڑکانا, ادھیڑنا
tweak in Malayalam
- നുള്ളുക, പിടിച്ചുവലിക്കുക, പിച്ചുക
tweak in Kannada
- ಚಿವುಟು, ಗಿಂಜು, ಕಿವಿಹಿಂಡು
More languagesFewer languages
- tweak in Punjabi
- ਟਵੀਕ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ, ਟਵੀੱਕ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ
- tweak in Gujarati
- ટ્વીક કરવા માટે
- tweak in Odia
- ଟ୍ବିକ୍ କରିବା
Examples of tweak in a sentence
- Indeed, economists are still tweaking it.2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
- 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.2017 January 14, “Thailand's new king rejects the army's proposed constitution”, in The Economist:
- “Russia needs leadership and he knows how to tweak people.” He grinned, “He made a convert of me,” chuckling.2006, Clarence Rockey, Carlisle Trace President of the People, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 171:
- But that ability that lets him see how to tweak people makes him a superb salesman.2011, Sara J. Henry, Learning to Swim: A Novel, Crown, →ISBN, page 183:
Synonyms of tweak
Forms of tweak
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | tweaks |
| present participle | tweaking |
| past participle | tweaked |
| past | tweaked |
| Noun | |
| plural | tweaks |
Origin of tweak
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.
Words formed from tweak
Phrases with tweak
Words that rhyme with tweak
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- leak
- seek
- bespeak
- pique
- reek
- sleek
- geek
- peek
- squeak
- week
- wreak
- boutique
- clique
- creek
- forspeak
- gleek
- unique
- bleak
- cacique
- creak
- critique
- deke
- eek
- eke
- fleak
- on fleek
- respeak
- Tajik
- teak
- technique
- tongue-in-chic
- chic
- cleek
- desqueak
- leek
- malik
- meek
- midweek
- misspeak
- physique
- pratique
- shriek
- speke
- streek
- Zeke
- -speak
- Adam's Peak
- advertique
Questions about tweak
- What does tweak mean?
- Tweak means to pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch.
- What is tweak in Tamil?
- Tweak in Tamil is வேகமாக திருக்கு, தேவைபடி மாற்று. See Tweak meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use tweak in a sentence?
- Indeed, economists are still tweaking it.
- What part of speech is tweak?
- Tweak can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce tweak?
- Tweak is pronounced /twiːk/.
- What is the past tense of tweak?
- The past tense of tweak is tweaked.
Words near tweak in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tweak (page history and authors); tweak (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tweak (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tweak (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tweak (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tweak (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tweak (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tweak (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-tweak.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tweak.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tweak. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.