I. verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
only
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Torches were again put to the kindling but the fire only teased the victim's feet and ankles.
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Guns killed you for sure, but maybe I was only teasing him about the milk.
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I was only teasing you because I thought you were just like the rest of them.
out
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It forces them to tease out information from inanimate objects.
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So it can be hard to tease out the effect of the mouse alone.
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To tease out their effects, I will begin by briefly outlining the procedural and organisational framework intended to promote interagency co-operation.
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Unspoken assumptions were teased out in corporations and examined.
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Suddenly, it becomes possible for the computer to tease out from the most incompetent practitioner his own masterpiece.
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Yet it s a one-joke play that teases out its central idea to the point of nervous exhaustion.
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Later, he hopes to be able to tease out information about the strength of heartbeats, too.
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They do nothing to break up the food into easily swallowed gobbets or to tease out the hard inedible bits.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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Brad was one of the kids who used to tease me at school.
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Don't get upset, Stuart, she's only teasing.
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Donna's only interested in teasing guys.
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I didn't mean to make you mad; I was only teasing.
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Kevin's always teasing me about my cooking.
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Sam's sisters used to tease him because he was overweight.
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The dog's going to bite you if you don't stop teasing it.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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And when they stopped begging, he would tease them.
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But he felt bad about teasing her.
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He teased her by trying to feed her chocolate profiteroles.
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I tease him about his prejudice.
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I knew Katie would tease me later about being a baby but I didn't care.
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There is another physical law that teases me, too: the Doppler Effect.
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They always do that, the saucy wenches, they like to tease and make me beg for them to come back.
II. noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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Erin's such a big tease .
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The movie preview should be a tease of what is to follow.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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As one increasingly explicit act followed another, it became clear that the emphasis is on strip rather than tease .
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But exhilaration is like any other high, a tease , a trick.
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By definition, a tease lasts about ten seconds or less and the information it contains works like a headline.
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The tease is designed to be very effective, very quickly.
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What a tease life was, to be sure!
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What had happened in the kitchen was a calculated wooing, tease , flirtation, safely outrageous.