I know it’s been a while, but Linguistic Spy is finally back after some travelling, some studying, some work and some stressful relocation. There wasn’t even much time to work through the archives, but I’ll sort that out. In the meantime, here’s another nice and useful word ‘to tweak‘. Today it cropped up in an email exchange with a recruitment consultant, who suggested that I tweaked my CV for the vacancy in question. Which I did.
To tweak means ‘to make small changes in order to improve something’. You can tweak almost anything and here are some examples to prove it:
– Test the waters by trading online first: It is a great idea to start trading online as there is so much you learn in business just by starting and then tweaking and refining. Online it is so much easier to do this (The Guardian).
– Chanel was associated with ladies who lunch when Lagerfeld took charge, and he deformalised it by taking apart the skirt suit, playing with the shape and constantly tweaking it over 40 years (The Guardian).
– Do you ‘tweak‘ recipes or stick to the original? (mumsnet forum)
– Minor tweaks to the rules are likely to change little. Planning is the responsibility of local government, and, as Mr Osborne pointed out, councils already have the power to redesignate land for building (The Economist).
Confessions of the Linguistic Spy 