The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tinker \Tink"er\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Tinkered; p. pr. & vb. n. Tinkering.] To mend or solder, as metal wares; hence, more generally, to mend.
Tinkering \Tink"er*ing\, n. The act or work of a tinker.
Wiktionary
n. An act of tinkering; an experimental fix or change. vb. (present participle of tinker English)
Usage examples of "tinkering".
Here am I with a pack of villains on my hands and no way to convict them of tinkering with the water adjutages, let alone treason!
When she saw Dobie inside, tinkering with some part on the tractor, she hesitated.
The easy access of a Ditto to his entire under-pinning -- unlike ourselves, with much of our personality lying in our subconscious and not consciously fixable --implies constant change, personality tinkering, perhaps worse.
Russia, that Rasputin is holding the camera, that I am the Tsarevich, and that behind the fence Mensheviks and Bolsheviks are tinkering with homemade bombs and plotting the downfall of my autocratic family.
Barney said reflexively, and resumed his tinkering with the defective autonomic scoop.
There were elements among the colonists who used genetic knowledge and manipulatory skills to enslave and breed the natives like beasts, doing some genetic tinkering to produce subsets of the basic form, lowering intelligence and inducing a docility that tended to result in a reduced lifespan for the six-legs so treated.
The viral vector has a very broad-spectrum transferase used principally by terraformers tinkering with the zygotes of exotic animals.
Wordsworth was continually tinkering at his verse, to the subsequent despair of conscientious variorum editors, and that most of the absurdities and infelicities in his first editions disappeared under the correcting influence of his sarcastic critics and his own maturing taste.
The prototype whatsit Ashton had been tinkering with caused a flood of speculation which left a thin sediment of hard fact.
But, beyond that, the Hets have done some direct genetic tinkering recently, fine-tuning existing dinosaurs to be better suited for war.
Every now and then Krebs would grasp the starting-handle and crank it hard and a feeble stutter would come from the engine before he went back to his tinkering.
The Genetic Standards Enforcement Agency may allow fanciful tinkering with flowers, but not with animal phyla higher than fish.
Yet Lick went straight to work tinkering with it, using it for lengthy statistical calculations and psychoacoustics experiments.
There was nothing sexier than watching a beautiful woman get dirty tinkering with something mechanical.
Here am I with a pack of villains on my hands and no way to convict them of tinkering with the water adjutages, let alone treason!