Tweaked

How to spell tweaked

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tweaked

What does tweaked mean?

1. verbMade a small, precise adjustment or change to something.
2. verbStrained or slightly injured a muscle or joint with a sharp pull.
3. verbPinched or twisted something sharply with the fingers.

Tweaked in a sentence

• She tweaked the recipe by adding a little more salt.

• He tweaked his hamstring during the warm-up and sat out the match.

• The toddler tweaked his grandfather's nose and giggled.

• The engineer tweaked the settings until the engine ran smoothly.

• She tweaked her back lifting a heavy box at work.

• She tweaked the wire into shape with her fingertips.

Where does tweaked come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word tweak comes from the older English verb twick or the Old English twiccian, meaning to pluck or pull sharply, the same family that gives us twitch. For centuries it described a quick pinching or twisting motion, such as tweaking someone's nose or plucking a string, and it carried a sense of a small, sharp, deliberate pull. From that physical meaning grew the modern figurative sense of making a tiny, precise adjustment to something, a usage that became common in the twentieth century, especially around machines, settings, and recipes. The spelling preserves the ea vowel pattern even though the word sounds like a long ee, which is the main thing that trips writers who are tempted to write tweeked. As a native Germanic word it has no Latin or French dressing, so the simple stem plus the regular -ed ending is all there is to remember.

How the word is built

• tweak (to pluck, pinch, twist; native English root)
• -ed (past tense suffix)