retweet

Formsretweets, retweeting, retweeted

Pluralretweets

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To repost or forward another user's message on the social media platform Twitter, sharing it with your own followers.

   Journalists often retweet breaking news before they have verified all the details.

   The celebrity retweeted a young fan's drawing, and it went viral overnight.

   Similarrepost, share

   Note

   Built from re- and tweet, the verb carries the original author's handle along with whatever it passes on, so credit travels with the message whether or not a comment is added. It takes an object (retweet your messages) but also stands alone, most often as a rallying call: "Retweet if you believe…". Pia Ceres, writing in 2023, groups it with repost and riposte as the web's everyday ways of recontextualizing someone else's words.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A message that has been reposted or forwarded by another user on the social media platform Twitter.

   A single retweet from a popular account can send a small post viral.

   The campaign tracked retweets to measure how far its message had spread.

   Similarrepost, share

   Note

   Here the word becomes something you can count, and retweets are a basic measure of a message's reach. People speak of arriving via a retweet, and of information spreading through retweets and shares. The noun has a legal life too: Daxton Stewart's Social Media and the Law (2013) asks whether a retweeter could be held liable for a defamatory retweet, and concludes that current case law makes it unlikely. For the act itself, see the verb.

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