- to pinch and pull with a jerk and twist: She playfully tweaked his ear.I tweaked my bowtie again, but it stayed stubbornly crooked.
- to pull or pinch the nose of, especially gently: He leaned over the stroller and tweaked the baby affectionately.
- to make a minor adjustment to: Bad hardware can't be fixed by tweaking the software.
- to annoy, tease, or make fun of: How much of her “dumb blonde” image was actually a brilliant performer tweaking the stuffed shirts?
- Slang.
- to use methamphetamine, cocaine, or other stimulant drugs: He'll try to avoid taking a drug test if he's been tweaking and toking.
- to engage in wildly excited or agitated behavior under the influence of such drugs (usually followed by out): If I'd seen someone else acting this way I would have thought they were tweaking on meth.
- an act or instance of tweaking; a sharp, twisting pull or jerk: "Thought it was you," she said, greeting him with a tweak on the nose.
- a minor adjustment: Here are 12 simple tweaks to speed up your computer.
- tweak out,
- to extract by pinching and pulling with a jerk, as with tweezers: In a twinkling she had tweaked out a dozen hairs and put them in an evidence bag.
- to remove (defects or unwanted features) by means of a minor adjustment: You have a couple of bugs to tweak out from your website, but you’re on the right track.
- to effect (an improvement) by means of minor adjustments: They were able to tweak out some pretty hefty performance improvements to the sound system.
- to optimize in this way: My operating system isn’t tweaked out the way I like, but it's running, stable enough, and ready for use.
- to engage in wildly excited or agitated behavior under the influence of methamphetamine, cocaine, or other stimulant drugs: She grabbed a knife and waved it around while tweaking out on crystal meth.He showed up shirtless and barefoot, tweaked out on cocaine.
- to make or become wildly excited or agitated; freak (someone) out: I decided not to tell my kids what I’d done so they wouldn't tweak out about it.
- to twist, jerk, or pinch with a sharp or sudden movement
- to tune (a car or engine) for peak performance
- to make a minor alteration
- an instance of tweaking
- a minor alteration
