If you tinker with something, you make some small changes to it, in an attempt to improve it or repair it. Instead of the Government admitting its error, it just tinkered with the problem It is not enough to tinker at the edges; our objective must be to reconstruct the entire system. + tinkering tink·er·ing No amount of tinkering is going to improve matters. to make small changes to something in order to repair it or make it work better tinker with