Verb

(en verb)

To pinch and pull with a sudden jerk and twist; to twitch.

(informal) To adjust slightly; to fine-tune.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Boundary problems , passage=Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.

To twit or tease.

(intransitive, US, slang) To abuse methamphetamines, especially crystal meth.

(intransitive, US, slang) To exhibit symptoms of methamphetamine abuse, such as extreme nervousness, compulsiveness, erratic motion, excitability; possibly a blend of twitch and freak.

(intransitive, US, slang) To exhibit extreme nervousness, evasiveness when confronted by law enforcement or other authority (e.g., customs agents, border patrol, teacher, etc.), mimicking methamphetamine abuse symptoms.

Verb

(en verb)

To make better.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1 , passage=I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore kilts. But I see I will have to amend that, because he was not a celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I left New York for the West.}}

* Shakespeare

Mar not the thing that cannot be amended .

* Sir Walter Scott

We shall cheer her sorrows, and amend her blood, by wedding her to a Norman.

To become better.

(obsolete) To heal (someone sick); to cure (a disease etc.).

* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , III.x:

But Paridell complaynd, that his late fight / With Britomart, so sore did him offend, / That ryde he could not, till his hurts he did amend .

*, II.2.6.ii:

he gave her a vomit, and conveyed a serpent, such as she conceived, into the basin; upon the sight of it she was amended .

To make a formal alteration in legislation by adding, deleting, or rephrasing.