Tweak
Pronunciation
- Rhymes: -iËk
Origin
From Middle English twikken, from Old English twiccian ("to pluck"), cognate with twitch.
Full definition of tweak
Noun
tweak
(plural tweaks)- A sharp pinch or jerk; a twist or twitch.a tweak of the nose.
- Trouble; distress; tweag.
- A slight adjustment or modification.He is running so many tweaks it is hard to remember how it looked originally.
- (obsolete, slang) A prostitute.
- 1638, Richard Brathwait, Barnabae Itinerarium: or Drunken Barnaby's four journeys to the north of England : In latin and english metre, Thomas Gent (1852), page 113:… 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.
Verb
- (transitive) To pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch.to tweak the nose.
- (transitive, informal) To adjust slightly; to fine-tune.If we tweak the colors towards blue, it will look more natural.
- 2013-08-03, Boundary problems, 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.
- (transitive) To twit or tease.
- (intransitive, US, slang) To abuse methamphetamines, especially crystal meth.
- (intransitive, US, slang) To exhibit symptoms of methamphetamine abuse, such as extreme nervousness, compulsiveness, erratic motion, excitability; possibly a blend of twitch and freak.
- (intransitive, US, slang) To exhibit extreme nervousness, evasiveness when confronted by law enforcement or other authority (e.g., customs agents, border patrol, teacher, etc.), mimicking methamphetamine abuse symptoms.