释义 |
tweet /twiːt /noun1The chirp of a small or young bird: the gentle tweet of a bird can be heard...- Yet, this area failed to similarly activate when the animals heard a variety of other sounds - bells, tones, dog barks, bird tweets, a human voice, scrambled monkey calls, etc.
- The melodious chirps, chirrups, tweets, twitters and warbling notes from the winged visitors blend well with the incessant hum, buzz and drone of innumerable insects, to produce the effect of being inside a vast forest.
- And later still, when I ambled around the estates, listening to the sweet tweet of the birds and the occasional joy-rider, there was no nip in the air.
2A message, image, etc. posted on Twitter: he started posting tweets via his mobile phone to let his parents know he was safe...- Outgoing chief Jonathan Schwartz announced his farewell with a haiku tweet.
- The impact of the news was especially dramatic online, with 30 per cent of Twitter's activity featuring tweets about the star.
- I'm going to show you some tweets now.
verb [no object]1Make a chirping noise: the birds were tweeting in the branches...- Happy birds chirped and tweeted, and a deer just barely out of sight grazed peacefully.
- Song birds tweeted in the tall trees above our heads, and swallows glided on the air, breezing above our heads.
- I discovered that I really really like my new bedroom (My mum kindly let me have her room…!) because at one in the morning I can still hear the birds tweeting gently in the trees outside my window.
2Post a message, image, etc. on Twitter: she talks about her own life, but she’s just as likely to tweet about budget cuts and Keynesian economics [with object]: she tweeted a picture of them smiling at the camera [with clause]: he tweeted that he would be willing to take a lie detector test [with direct speech]: the president tweeted: ‘After you vote, tell your Facebook friends—“I voted.”’...- I can promise you, I'm not going to be tweeting on the weekends.
- Within hours of Stephen Fry tweeting a link to the petition on Sunday morning, thousands of people had added their signatures.
- In May, astronaut Mike Massimino became the first person to tweet from space during space shuttle Atlantis' repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
2.1 [with object] Communicate with (someone) on Twitter: email us, tweet us, go to our blog, and find us on Facebook...- A lot of you have tweeted me about this today.
- Tweet me with your thoughts on social networking, students, and principals who want to keep tabs.
- Someone tweeted me saying they took a Frisbee class in high school and college.
OriginMid 19th century: imitative. chat from Middle English: In medieval times chat was formed as a shorter version of chatter, which itself started life as an imitation of the sound made by people chatting away, rather as jabber (Late Middle English) and twitter (Late Middle English) imitated the sound they described. The chattering classes are liberal, well-educated people, often working in the media, who are fond of expressing their views on any and every subject. This name for them has been around since at least the early 1980s. The success of the website called Twitter has led to heated debate among users as to whether what they do should be called to twitter or to tweet (mid 19th century)—yet another word imitating the sound of birds. See also jargon
Rhymesaccrete, autocomplete, beet, bittersweet, bleat, cheat, cleat, clubfeet, compete, compleat, complete, conceit, Crete, deceit, delete, deplete, discreet, discrete, eat, effete, élite, entreat, escheat, estreat, excrete, feat, feet, fleet, gîte, greet, heat, leat, leet, Magritte, maltreat, marguerite, meat, meet, meet-and-greet, mesquite, mete, mistreat, neat, outcompete, peat, Pete, petite, pleat, receipt, replete, sangeet, seat, secrete, sheet, skeet, sleet, splay-feet, street, suite, sweet, teat, treat, wheat |