tamper

UK/ˈtæm.pə(ɹ)/

verbB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,691 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: tampering, tampered, tampers

To tamper is to interfere with something you should leave alone. Tamper with the evidence, tamper-proof, tampered with.

It nearly always takes with and nearly always implies wrongdoing — tampering with evidence, with a witness, with a lock. Tamper-evident packaging is designed to show that somebody has, which is why medicine boxes are sealed the way they are. Note that the word came from tamp, meaning to pack down.

Definitions of tamper

1verbtamperTo interfere with something you should leave alone.B2+
“Someone had tampered with the brakes on his car.”

tamper is an interfering.

Where it comes from

Tamper is a variant of temper, in the old sense of mixing or meddling, and was influenced by tamp, to pack down.

From tamp + er.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

tamper in the wild

However, as torx drivers became more common, tamper-resistant variants, as described below, were developed.
Torx
The Tsar Bomba was the most powerful bomb ever detonated at 50 megatons of TNT, despite the uranium tamper being replaced with lead to reduce radioactive fallout.
Thermonuclear weapon
Prior to the introduction of mechanical tampers, this task was done by manual labour with the help of beaters.
Tamping machine
The tamper lifts each sleeper and the rails up, and packs ballast underneath.
Tamping machine
Tamper-resistant devices or features are common on packages to deter package or product tampering or enable its detection.
Tamperproofing

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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