tweedle

verb

1. (obsolete, transitive)To handle lightly; said with reference to awkward playing on a fiddle.

   ““Neaw, owd lad,” said he, as he screwed, first one peg, then another, and tweedled over little fits of wailing prelude, to get the tones he wanted.”

   “Hark, —his tortured catgut squals He tickles every string, to every note He bends his pliant neck.—The fond yielding Maid Is tweedled into Love.”

2. (broadly, obsolete, transitive)To influence as if by fiddling; to coax; to allure.

   “A fiddler brought in with him a body of lusty young fellows, whom he had tweedled into the service.”

   “But I tweedled him into letting you try, and here you are, a real member of the company.”

3. To twiddle.

   “As it was, he tweedled the letter about in his hands for about five minutes, in a musing mood, and then stepped with it into Mr. Gammon's room.”

   “Bob Pirgivie now tweedled his thumbs in double quick time, and rapidly sent around queer horizontal glances under his shaggy brows.”

   “He blinked slowly and tweedled his long brown mustache between his fingers.”

   “Mary noticed Gaby absently tweedling the green ribbon hanging from her coat's buttonhole.”

   “John Hammerkein, the bulky, slow-voiced communications officer, tweedled knobs in the far corner, under the bulletin board where the field's traffic pattern was posted.”

4. (UK, slang)To sell fake jewellery as genuine.

   “I am afraid that the knowing author of the “cracking a-crib” book would be flummoxed by tweedling.”

   “Girls, smokes, bit of smack, mossing, tweedling; a very democratic villain, Mr Salvatore.”

5. To make a shrill or trilling sound

   “Yesterday I dined at the Percivals, and tweedled away upon a lovely harpsichord, and I was not bid to “mind my time.””

   “Something tweedled, and Temple jumped. Every new car had its own literal bells and whistles that told you to take the key out of the ignition, or put your seat belt on, or to turn off your headlights.”

   “From deep inside my purse, my cell phone tweedled the opening bars of “Start Me Up.””

6. To say in a high-pitched voice.

   “Hurt that the Churts and I were exchanging fatuities over yet another second-rate painting instead of tweedling appreciatively over the extraordinary and beautiful child she was rocking on the other side of the room?”

   “"Oh, bien sur. Monsieur Raphael has only the kindest things to say," Azter tweedled. “Always.””

7. To trifle or play.

   “That exemption was not intended to be a hair splitting elusive hope to be tweedled away by administrative interpretation.”

   “Intellectual tweedling is not within my character.”

   “There aren't many things that make playwriting easy, but the fluency of the English language is a tremendous help. Now if you choose to write in Ur Chinese, you haven't got that, you've only got the meaning of what is being said. And that was bracing, after years of tweedling round with words.”

   “The organization is not to be tweedled with.”

8. To go; to proceed without much enthusiasm.

   “You all have undoubtedly noticed men in the rural pursuits tweedling along through life and finally end it all identical with what it was when they began: no better, no worse.”

   “moving slowly but moving nonetheless; and close enough that if I quit and he kept tweedling along, he would finish with more miles than I and I'd be even more depressed long after I stopped shivering. He did keep tweedling along, but so did I.”

   “What was discretion but chickenheartedness and a capitulation to age? If I tweedled back to Saratoga without doing anything, then I might as well kiss Rosemary good-bye.”

   “In the first part of the scene, the Frenchman dominates the monkey while tweedling along blithely as his Saint-Dominguan servants look with confusion on what surrounds them.”

9. To move or speak in unison (like Tweedledum and Tweedledee)

   “"I shall feel myself a failure as a chaperone surely," remarked Mrs.Green. "We think you a tremendous success," tweedled the twins.”

   ““Why, they're tweedling now, " said little Frankie and sure enough they were, and tweedling in perfect unison too, without any expression whatsoever.“”

   “"[…] cold storage,” soothed Page Allison. “Not a chance,” tweedled the twins.”

noun

1. A sound of the kind made by a fiddle.
2. (UK, slang)A confidence trick in which fake jewellery is sold as genuine.

   “Reggie had a way with him. People trusted him, and he could always pick up a few pounds when he needed them from the jargoons and the tweedle.”