tamper

/ˈtæmpər/

Other forms: tampered; tampering; tampers

To tamper is to alter or mess with something, usually for a bad reason. Tamper also refers to being nosy about someone's business. Don’t tamper with anything; it’s annoying.

Tamper involves sticking your nose where it doesn't belong. One kind of tampering involves meddling in other people's affairs. The other kind of tampering has to do with things. If you tamper with financial records, you alter them. Sometimes medicine or food will come with a label that says “tamper proof,” like when a bottle of vitamins is sealed so that you can’t open it until you buy it.

Definitions of tamper

1. verb

   play around with or alter or falsify, usually secretively or dishonestly
   “Someone tampered with the documents on my desk”

   synonyms: fiddle, monkey

   type of:

   manipulate

   hold something in one's hands and move it
2. verb

   intrude in other people's affairs or business; interfere unwantedly
   synonyms: meddle

   type of:

   interfere, interpose, intervene, step in

   get involved, so as to alter or hinder an action, or through force or threat of force
3. noun

   a tool for tamping (e.g., for tamping tobacco into a pipe bowl or a charge into a drill hole etc.)
   synonyms: tamp, tamping bar

   types:

   stemmer

   a miner's tamping bar for ramming packing in over a blasting charge

   type of:

   tool

   an implement used in the practice of a vocation