subtweet

noun

1. 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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

2. (broadly)Any social media post of this type, regardless of which service it is posted on.

verb

1. 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.”

   “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.”

2. (broadly, transitive)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.”