Timeline for Meaning of the verb "tease" in context
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 22, 2018 at 16:09 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Todd: Judging by all those upvotes for your comment (7, as I write), this seems to be a pretty well-known usage. But I must admit I've never consciously noticed it myself, and I can't find any online definitions for it. Can you? | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 22:05 | comment | added | Francis Davey | I too find it an odd usage - as a native speaker I would not use it and find it at best quirky and not a little annoying to read. I realise what must be meant, but in a strict sense I wouldn't accept is as grammatical in my own dialect. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 18:22 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | @FumbleFingers This sense of tease is used often with information or content as the object, not the audience (reader/listener/etc.) One place you can hear tease used like this is when discussing the live performance of jam bands. Often, such a band will play tiny snippets of music but not play the whole song. Playing those snippets is called "teasing [name of song]". For example, "Did you see Phish at Merriweather? They teased both 'Down With Disease' and 'Born Under A Bad Sign'". | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 18:11 | vote | accept | Dmytro O'Hope | ||
| Feb 21, 2018 at 16:33 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I'm sure you're right about that being the intended sense. But I think it's a somewhat quirky / questionable usage - he appears to have arrived at it by reduction from something like ...in the preview I will at least tease /titillate you (the reader) with (some aspects of) that definition. But the object of tease should be the person being aroused or toyed with, not the thing being used to achieve this effect. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 15:10 | history | answered | StoneyB on hiatus | CC BY-SA 3.0 |