Tweet

See also: tweet

English

Etymology 1

Americanized spelling of either Norwegian Tveit or North German Twiete.

Proper noun

Tweet (plural Tweets)

1. A surname.

Statistics

• According to the 2010 United States Census, Tweet is the 37229^th most common surname in the United States, belonging to 599 individuals. Tweet is most common among White (92.49%) individuals.

Further reading

• Hanks, Patrick, editor (2003), “Tweet”, in Dictionary of American Family Names, volume 3, New York City: Oxford University Press, →ISBN.

Etymology 2

Noun

Tweet (plural Tweets)

1. Alternative letter-case form of tweet (“Twitter post”)
   • 2008 May 31, Jessica Guynn, “Contest inspires few words”, in Los Angeles Times, page C3:

     Twitter allows users, called Twitterers, to stay constantly connected with friends and family by sending and receiving messages short messages called Tweets. […] Write a short story in the maximum length of a Tweet.

   • 2008 August 15, Lyssa Oberkreser, “Tweets have got her all a-Twitter”, in Tallahassee Democrat, 103rd year, number 228, page 3B:

     Julia Thompson will be sending out news Tweets ([…]) and I’ll be keeping you updated with cool calendar Tweets ([…]).

   • 2008 December 2, Tom Sutcliffe, “Twittering on is not the way to provide news”, in The Independent, number 6,906, page 31:

     Twitter, if you’re not familiar with it, is a form of micro-blogging, which allows users to send very short updates on what they’re doing to anyone interested to receive them and last week several “Tweets” – as the Twitter postings are called – started appearing in the BBC’s coverage. […] Given that several “Tweets” instructively contradicted the official line on what was happening you might argue that this enlistment of an army of virtual stringers improved the BBC’s coverage. But that argument wouldn’t take account of the subtle alteration of trust that takes place when you read coverage that cuts and pastes random “Tweets” alongside more conventional forms of BBC journalism.

   • 2009 March 2, Kevin Pang, “@JimmyFallon wants you to follow him”, in Chicago Tribune, 162nd year, number 61, section 3, page 1:

     The 34-year-old Fallon has also become a prolific Twitterer (yes, it really is him sending Tweets from his iPhone).

   • 2009 March 15, Corilyn Shropshire, “Twitter: When is it too much?”, in The Marshall News Messenger, volume 131, number 287, page 2B:

     So it makes sense that just over a year and countless Tweets later, the pair tied the knot last week in a 15-hour extravaganza that was chock-full of spontaneous Tweets not only by the bride and groom, but guests both in-person and on the Web.

   • 2009 March 25, Jack Cowan, “Not falling for Twitter mania”, in San Angelo Standard-Times, page A4:

     I don’t doubt the time- and hassle-saving example, but my guess is that for every one of those there are 999 Tweets about going to the mall or going to see friends or going to see friends at the mall. […] Twitterers join lists of people they want to follow (not my word, but I like it), and if they follow 15 people who send out five Tweets each, that’s a lot of techno-sludge to wade through every day. […] Most of the politicians who aren’t boring are offensive, and any journalist who can tell a story in 140 characters—that’s the maximum Tweet length—isn’t writing about anything that interests me.

   • 2009 April 6, Suzanne Condie Lambert, “Demi’s Tweets help save woman”, in The Arizona Republic, 119th year, number 323, page D6:

     Demi’s Tweets help save woman […] As the law of probabilities would dictate, Demi Moore’s millions of Tweets have finally saved a human life.

Verb

Tweet (third-person singular simple present Tweets, present participle Tweeting, simple past and past participle Tweeted)

1. Alternative letter-case form of tweet (“to post on Twitter”)
   • 2009 April 1, Ofelia Casillas, “All a-Twitter over ‘Tamale Guy’”, in Chicago Tribune, section 4, page 1, column 2:

     Girls want pictures with him; guys dress like him for Halloween; more than 500 people “Tweet” his whereabouts on the social networking Web site.

   • 2009 September 11, Clay A. Dumas, “So You Think You Can Shout”, in The Havard Crimson‎^[1], archived from the original on 5 August 2013:

     His comment galvanized fiscally conservative Democrats to support the president’s bill and heightened the sense of despondency among those Republican congressmen and senators who BBMed and Tweeted on their BlackBerries throughout the speech.

   • 2017, Wendy K. Bendoni, Social Media for Fashion Marketing: Storytelling in a Digital World, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, →ISBN, page 209:

     “I cannot tell you how many times I have Instagrammed or Tweeted a piece that I am going to use on one of the characters on the show, and fans of the show are just yearning for it,” say Lane.

   • 2018, Adam Rapp, chapter 1, in Fum, Candlewick Press, →ISBN, page 21:

     Corinthia’s bathroom was never discussed with the Lugo Memorial student body, but when it (the bathroom) materialized, it was Facebooked, Instagrammed, Tweeted, Foursquared, WordPressed, Tumblred, Snapchatted, and so thoroughly digitally disseminated that it was as if pictures of Rinna Buss’s breasts had been leaked.

   • 2020, Shannon Takaoka, Everything I Thought I Knew, Candlewick Press, →ISBN, page 250:

     People who live here pride themselves on being off the grid—a feat increasingly impossible in today’s always-Instagrammed, shared, Tweeted, GPS-mapped world.

Usage notes

Tweet and Tweeter are the forms used by Twitter.

German

Etymology

Borrowed from English tweet.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tviːt/, [tʋiːt]

• Audio

  (file)

• Homophone: Tweed

Noun

Tweet m (strong, genitive Tweets or Tweet, plural Tweets)

1. tweet (post to Twitter)

   Synonyms: Twitterbeitrag, Twittereintrag

   • 2023 January 26, “Lawrow in Afrika: Auswärtiges Amt bittet für Tweet mit Leopard-Emoji um Entschuldigung”, in Der Spiegel‎^[2], →ISSN:

     Der Leopard wurde dabei mit einem Emoji dargestellt. Der Tweet wurde bereits am 24. Januar veröffentlicht.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Usage notes

• Duden claims that Tweet is also used as a neuter noun. In practice, it is now almost exclusively treated as masculine.

Declension

Declension of Tweet [masculine, strong]

	singular			plural
	indef.	def.	noun	def.	noun
nominative	ein	der	Tweet	die	Tweets
genitive	eines	des	Tweets, Tweet	der	Tweets
dative	einem	dem	Tweet	den	Tweets
accusative	einen	den	Tweet	die	Tweets

Related terms

• Retweet
• tweeten
• Twitter
• twittern

Further reading

• “Tweet” in Duden online
• “Tweet” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache