▪ I. tease, n.
Also 7–9 teaze.
[f. tease v.1]
1. a. The action of teasing. † upon the tease, uneasy from trifling irritation (obs.). rare.
| 1693 C. Mather Wond. Invis. World (1862) 162 After she had undergone a deal of Teaze from the Annoyance of the Spectre. 1706 S. Centlivre Basset-Table iii. 34 There's One upon the Teaze already. 1707 ― Platonick Lady v. 61, I left her upon the Teaze. 1878–9 Lanier Poems, Individuality 10 No pitiless tease of risk or bottomry. |
b. tease number, a strip-tease act. U.S.
| 1927 Variety 13 July 35/5 The four feminine principals alternated in ‘tease’ numbers with the help of the chorus. 1930 Ibid. 3 Dec. 54 With a fair voice, a nice figure and lots of personality, Miss Almond clicked easily in her tease numbers. |
2. a. A person addicted to teasing; one who irritates another in a trifling or sportive way. colloq.
| 1852 Dickens Bleak Ho. xxx, What a teaze you are. 1899 B. Harraden Fowler ii. v. 190, I am a tease by nature. |
b. spec. = cock teaser s.v. cock n.1 23 (but less coarse). Also transf.
| 1976 New Yorker 16 Feb. 107/2 It's easy to get laughs by..showing women..as rich teases, like Mariangela Melato's role in ‘Swept Away’. 1978 D. Devine Sunk without Trace xxii. 202 Sorry, Ken, but..it's not fair to encourage you to try. I will not be a tease. 1979 Arizona Daily Star 5 Aug. i. 1/2 Lulu is..a cruel tease to the lesbian countess Geschwitz. |
▪ II. tease, v.1
(tiːz)
Forms: 1 tǽsan, 4–5 tese, 5 teese, 7 teise, 7–9 teize, teaze, 8 teez, teaz, 6– tease.
[OE. tǽsan to tear or pull to pieces, tease (wool, etc.), wk. vb. = OLG. *têsan (MLG., LG. têsen, MDu. têzen, Du. teezen to draw, pull, scratch, NFris. tiese), OHG. zeisan str. vb., MHG. zeisen wk. vb., Ger. dial. (Bav.) zaisen, zeisen (Schade) to tease, pick wool:—OTeut. *taisjan and *taisan: cf. also toase v.]
1. a. trans. To separate or pull asunder the fibres of; to comb or card (wool, flax, etc.) in preparation for spinning; to open out by pulling asunder; to shred.
| c 1000 Sax. Leechd. III. 112 Nim þanne wulle & tæs hy. ? c 1390 Forme of Cury in Warner Antiq. Culin. (1791) 17 Take the brawn, and tese it smal. 14.. Noble Bk. Cookry (Napier 1882) 102 Then teese the braun of capon or henn small. 1591 Percivall Sp. Dict., Carmenar, to picke wooll, to tease wooll, carminare. 1612 Woodall Surg. Mate Wks. (1653) 344 Take Saffron..then tease it, I mean, pull the parts thereof asunder. 1634 Milton Comus 751 To ply The sampler, and to teize the huswifes wooll. 1683 Moxon Mech. Exerc., Printing xxiv. ¶19 [He] Teizes his Wooll, by opening all the..matted knots he finds in it. 1828 P. Cunningham N.S. Wales (ed. 3) II. 151 While teasing out the tobacco-leaf to charge his pipe. 1851 Art Jrnl. Illustr. Catal. p. iv**/2 The quick moving cards teaze out the fibres, and gradually, very gradually, disentangle them. 1875 Huxley & Martin Elem. Biol. xi. (1876) 122 Tease out a bit of the liver in water, and examine with 1/8 obj. 1893 A. N. Palmer Hist. Wrexham IV. 10 The flax dressers prepared the flax for the linen spinners and weavers by ‘teasing’ it. |
b. To comb the surface of cloth, after weaving, with teasels, which draw all the free hairs or fibres in one direction, so as to form a nap.
| 1755 Johnson, Tease,..to scratch cloth in order to level the nap. 1829 J. L. Knapp Jrnl. Nat. 48 Many of these [teasel] heads are fixed in a frame; and with this the surface of the cloth is teased, or brushed, until all the ends are drawn out. 1861 Miss Pratt Flower. Pl. III. 172 Blankets were made of goats'-wool, teased into a satiny surface by little Teazel-like brushes of bamboo. |
† c. To tear in pieces. Obs.
| a 1550 Hye Way to Spyttel H. 888 in Hazl. E.P.P. IV. 63 Lyke as wolues the shepe dooth take and tease. |
d. U.S. Hairdressing. = back-comb vb. trans. s.v. back- B.
| 1957 Amer. Hairdresser Sept. 66 Pick up one inch of hair and with comb, tease the strand. This creates the lift so necessary to the style. 1962 E. Frank Best Hairdos 7 Tease entire head gently for fullness. 1978 J. Updike Coup (1979) iv. 171 Her hair bleached platinum and teased to a bouffant mass. |
e. to tease out (fig.): to extract, get out, obtain, esp. by painstaking effort. Also to tease on to.
| 1959 N. Mailer Advts. for Myself (1961) 17 There was a time when Pirandello could tease a comedy of pain out of six characters in search of an author. 1971 Language XLVII. 525 It is only by the most careful discrimination that we are able to tease out the critical referential features from the mass of inferential stuff that surrounds them in normal speech. 1974 J. A. Michener Centennial x. 580 He was struck with how easy life was in Pennsylvania and how brutally difficult in Colorado, where you had to dig a ditch twenty miles before you could tease a little water onto your land. |
2. a. To worry or irritate by persistent action which vexes or annoys; now esp. in lighter sense, to disturb by persistent petty annoyance, out of mere mischief or sport; to bother or plague in a petty way.
| 1627 [see teased 2]. 1679 C. Hatton in H. Corr. (Camden) 210 After he had thus teised them for 2 or 3 houres he left them. 1686 tr. Chardin's Trav. Persia 162 Teizing me for two Hours together with a Thousand Impertinencies. 1710 Swift Lett. (1767) III. 23 Lord Halifax is always teazing me to go down to his country house, which will cost me a guinea to his servants, and twelve shillings coach hire. 1774 Pennant Tour Scot. in 1772, 283 The violent squalls of wind..teized us for an hour. 1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. IV. 74 To avoid teizing the reader with a minute description. 1782 F. Burney Diary 8 Dec., [They] resisted reading the book till they were teased into it. 1827 D. Johnson Ind. Field Sports 208 A boy..was teizing the animal to make it bite him. 1881 Besant & Rice Chapl. of Fleet I. 14 Harry ceased to tease and torment them with little tricks and devices of mischief. |
| fig. 1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. I. 54 The earth..constantly teized more to furnish..luxuries..than.. necessities. 1856 Mrs. Browning Aur. Leigh i. 1050, I..teased The patient needle till it split the thread. 1893 Westm. Gaz. 17 Feb. 3/1 It is all done with that flowing brush.., and there is nothing teased or overworked in the whole of it. |
b. absol. or intr. (With first quot., cf. touse v.)
| 1619 Fletcher M. Thomas v. vii. What a coyle has this fellow kept i' th' Nunnery,..Pray Heavens he be not teasing. 1693 Dryden Juvenal vi. 377 Conscious of Crimes her self, she teizes first. 1751 Johnson Rambler No. 144 ¶6 To teize with feeble blows and impotent disturbance. a 1861 Mrs. Browning Little Mattie vii, Love both ways, kiss and tease. |
c. = strip-tease vb. intr. s.v. strip-tease n. U.S.
| 1927 Variety 13 July 35/5 Where they cooch in New York they ‘tease’ here. 1953 Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang (1954) §593/22 ‘Do a striptease.’.. Strip, striptease, tease. |
3. slang. To flog. ? Obs.
| 1812 J. H. Vaux Flash Dict., Teaze, to flog or whip. 1865 [see teasing vbl. n.1 3]. |
▪ III. tease, v.2 local.
Also teaze.
[ad. mod.F. tiser (technical) ‘to introduce fuel into a melting-furnace’ (Littré); to fire a furnace; app. aphetic for attiser = It. attizzare, Sp., Prov. atizar to stir (the fire), f. à:—L. ad to + It. tizzo, Sp. tizo, L. titio, burning brand, fire-brand.]
trans. To feed (a furnace fire) with fuel; to attend to (a fire or furnace).
| 1818 J. Adley Coal Trade (Northumb. Gloss.), You must have furnacemen to teaze and rouse the fire. 1894 [see teasing vbl. n.2]. |