Word.ws English Dictionary

tweaking

tweaking is the present participle and gerund of tweak.

Meaning of tweak

Verb

tweak (third-person singular simple present tweaks, present participle tweaking, simple past and past participle tweaked)

  1. (transitive) To pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch.
    • to tweak the nose.
  2. (informal, transitive) To adjust slightly; to fine-tune.
    • If we tweak the colors towards blue, it will look more natural.
  3. (transitive) 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
  4. (US, intransitive, slang) To abuse methamphetamines, especially crystal meth.
  5. (US, intransitive, slang) To exhibit extreme nervousness, evasiveness when confronted by authorities, compulsiveness, erratic motion, excitability, etc, due to or mimicking the symptoms of methamphetamine abuse.
  6. (broadly, intransitive, slang) To be extremely confused; to have no clue what is happening.
    • Am I tweaking or does 2020 feel like 6 months ago?
    Synonyms:
    trip

See all 14 meanings of tweak

Noun

tweaking (plural tweakings)

  1. A tweak; a minor modification.
    • The paintings seem concerned, if understatedly, about despoliation and other human tweakings of the landscape.2007 July 13, Grace Glueck, “Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Barrier”, in New York Times

Forms of tweaking

pluraltweakings

Words formed from tweaking

Phrases with tweaking

Questions about tweaking

What does tweaking mean?
Tweaking means a tweak; a minor modification.
What is tweaking the present participle and gerund of?
Tweaking is the present participle and gerund of tweak.
What part of speech is tweaking?
Tweaking is a noun.
What is the plural of tweaking?
The plural of tweaking is tweakings.

Words near tweaking in the dictionary

  1. tweakers
  2. tweakery
  3. tweakier
  4. tweakiest
  5. tweakified
  6. tweaking
  7. tweaking on
  8. tweaking out
  9. tweakings
  10. tweakment
  11. tweakments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tweaking (page history and authors); tweak (page history and authors). 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.

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Cite this entry: “tweaking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tweaking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.