different between tweeze vs tweezer

English

Etymology

Back-formation from tweezers.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /twiz/
• Rhymes: -i?z

Verb

tweeze (third-person singular simple present tweezes, present participle tweezing, simple past and past participle tweezed)

1. (transitive) To pluck or grasp using tweezers.
   • 1929, “Philatelists,” Time, 2 September, 1929,^[1]

     Stamp-men tweeze their treasures to avoid smudging, wear, tear; to hold them up to the light or pick them out of benzine baths in search of watermarks.

   • 1930, Virginia Woolf, “Beau Brummell,” in The Common Reader: Second Series, 1932,^[2]

     He held his usual levee at his lodgings; he spent the usual hours washing and dressing; he rubbed his teeth with a red root, tweezed out hairs with a silver tweezer, tied his cravat to admiration, and issued at four precisely as perfectly equipped as if the Rue Royale had been St. James's Street and the Prince himself had hung upon his arm.

2. (transitive) To shape by plucking out hairs with tweezers.
   • 1950, Anya Seton, Foxfire, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Chapter One, p. 4,^[3]

     Here Mrs. Lawrence had smiled to soften the anxiety of her blue eyes under their frowning, carefully tweezed brows.

   • 1988, Edmund White, The Beautiful Room is Empty, New York: Vintage International, 1994, Chapter Three,

     He’d run his lacquered, dusky pink index finger over his tweezed mustache and say […]

3. (intransitive) To pluck out hairs using tweezers.
   • 2012, Adriana Ermter, “How to get the perfect eyebrows: Four reasons to enlist a professional,” Chatelaine, 16 November, 2012,^[4]

     Word to the wise: if you must tweeze solo, stick to plucking only the obvious stray hairs.

Translations

English

Adjective

tweezer (not comparable)

1. (attributive) tweezers.

Noun

tweezer (plural tweezers)

1. (US) A pair of tweezers, tweezers.

Verb

tweezer (third-person singular simple present tweezers, present participle tweezering, simple past and past participle tweezered)

1. To use tweezers.
   • 2011, William deBuys, A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest

     Sadler has already wrapped an ace bandage around a badly sprained wrist (sustained in a fall on a desert trail), tweezered out a few cactus spines, moleskinned some blisters, and doled out all the pastillas de dolor —painkillers […]