Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

tweak

/twiːk/ verb, noun

Forms tweaks tweaking tweaked

  1. verb (transitive) To pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch. “to tweak the nose.”
  2. verb (transitive, informal) To adjust slightly; to fine-tune. “If we tweak the colors towards blue, it will look more natural.”
  3. verb (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).
  4. verb (intransitive, US, slang) To abuse methamphetamines, especially crystal meth.
  5. verb (intransitive, US, 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. verb (intransitive, slang, by extension) To be extremely confused; to have no clue what is happening. “Am I tweaking or does 2020 feel like 6 months ago?”
  7. verb (military, weaponry, uncommon) From a catapult, to strike a target with a missile.
  8. noun A sharp pinch or jerk; a twist or twitch. “a tweak of the nose”
  9. noun A slight adjustment or modification. “He is running so many tweaks it is hard to remember how it looked originally.”
  10. noun Trouble; distress; tweag.
  11. noun (obsolete, slang) A prostitute.
  12. noun (slang) Methamphetamine.
  13. noun (slang) A single inhalation of cocaine.
  14. noun (cryptography) An additional input to a block cipher, used in conjunction with the key to select the permutation computed by the cipher.

Synonyms

trip pinch pluck pull off pick off fine-tune

Etymology

From Middle English twikken, from Old English twiccian (“to pluck”), from Proto-West Germanic *twekkōn (“to fasten; clamp; pinch”). Related to twitch. The drug-related sense may be a blend of twitch and freak.

Webster’s 1913

  1. verb To pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch; as, to tweak the nose. Shak.
  2. noun A sharp pinch or jerk; a twist or twitch; as, a tweak of the nose.
  3. noun Trouble; distress; tweag. [Obs.]

Etymology [OE. twikken, originally the same word as twicchen; cf. LG. twikken. See Twitch.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “tweak”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details