subtweet meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

subtweet

noun

Etymology Blend of subliminal + tweet.

A tweet that refers to another user without tagging their name in the message, so that the user being talked about is not automatically notified.

But it was also a subtweet, addressed to one person but meant for someone else entirely.2014, Daleen Berry, Geoffrey Fuller, The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese:
Curt texts, unanswered emails, Facebook statuses declaring “someone” to be an idiot, the notorious subtweet; if you can communicate with it, people can be passive aggressive with it.2015 February 19, Dean Burnett, “OK, don't read this article about passive-aggressive behaviour. Honestly, it's fine”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

1 more example

Don’t look back in anger—Oasis, the prodigal sons of Brit-pop, is returning. After years of public feuding and subtweets and alleged battery with a cricket bat, the Gallagher brothers—Liam and Noel, obvs—are working it out on the remix, with a rash of 2025 summer dates announced on their website.2024 August 28, Raven Smith, “Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher, and the Art of the Public Feud”, in Vogue:

Broadly Any social media post of this type, regardless of which service it is posted on.

verb

Etymology Blend of subliminal + tweet.

To post a message of this kind.

More often than not, they employed this term when referencing various teen dramas that occurred between friends and classmates that required insider knowledge to decode. In other words, teens subtweet to talk behind someone else's back.2014, danah boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (page 69)
A less subtle way of navigating the relationship between the public and the obscure is found in subtweeting or vaguebooking (vague facebooking), the art of posting elliptically about a social situation without naming names.2019, Gretchen McCulloch, chapter 6, in Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, Riverhead Books, →ISBN:

Broadly To speak obliquely about (a person).

Schumer's remarks were oblique enough that no one will be able to say for sure whether he was subtweeting Trump.2017 January 20, Aaron Blake, “Chuck Schumer sent a pretty pointed message to Donald Trump, right in front of him”, in The Washington Post: