"tween" definition, meaning, and origin

Adjective

Of or relating to tweenagers.
- I am going to describe a video that threw me into a pit of despair. It begins with a woman running into the aisle of a big-box store and telling a tween boy that she needs phone chargers. - 2020 January 29, Dan Brooks,...
Synonyms: tweenage

Blend of teen + between in the sense of "between childhood and adolescence".

An action of tweening (inserting frames for continuity); a sequence of frames generated by tweening.
- Because the results of a shape tween can be unpredictable, you can set shape hints to let Flash know how to proceed with the tween. - 2004, Andy Anderson, Mark Del Lima, Steve Johnson, Show Me Macromedia Flash MX 2004,...
- A tween is a method of creating animation, where you tell Flash where to start and where to end, and Flash does all the work in the middle. There are three types of tweens: Classic, Shape, and Motion. - 2009, Keith...
- If you select the frames first, they will be replaced by the copied tween. - 2009, Rich Shupe, Learning Flash CS4 Professional, page 129:

Clipping of in between.

A number or age in the twenties (plural only), or a person of that age.
- At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three. - 1954, J.R.R. Tolkien, “2, The Shadow of the Past”, in Lord of the...
- And although Mums don't always control the purse strings of the tweens (the younger set in their twenties), they are not entirely a forgotten influence. - 1960, Display World, vol. 77 p. 62

Blend of twenty + teen.

A child, especially a girl, in the age range between middle childhood and adolescence, normally between eight and thirteen years of age.
- When Play Along — the holder of the Care Bears master toy license — placed Care Bears plushes in Spencer Gifts last year, tweens and teenage girls bought the toys. - 2002 March 2, Billboard, volume 114, number 9, page...
- This grade school thinking forgets that tweens are one of the most sophisticated groups of consumers in the marketplace, and that kids this age have zero tolerance for being treated like children. - 2004, Lisa Johnson,...
- Next stop on the worthless train is the tweens who range from ages ten to thirteen years old. The tweens are so damn annoying, they make me want to jump off a cliff. - 2006 Twenty Something Essays by Twenty Something...
Synonyms: tweenager tweener tweenie betweenager preadolescent prepubescent preteen preteenager tween

Alternative spelling of 'tween.
- “Skunks first colonized this land in 1794. With the arrival of European settlers, an uneasy truce was established tween man and skunk. Gifts were exchanged. Treaties were struck... and broken. A feud ignited, resulting...

To generate intermediate frames in an animated sequence so as to give the appearance of smooth movement.
- The two most important and advanced ingredients of today's animation are tweening and morphing. - 2004, D. P. Mukherjee, Fundamentals of Computer Graphics and Multimedia, page 117:
- Simple motion tweening moves your objects in a straight line from here to there.[…]You can also combine frame-by-frame animation with tweened animation. - 2005, Ellen Finkelstein, Gurdy Leete, Macromedia Flash 8 For...
- The first parameter is the object that you want to tween, and the second parameter is the amount of time you want it to take in seconds. - 2012, Christopher Griffith, Real-World Flash Game Development, 2nd edition, page...