Giggling

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Making light, silly sounds of laughter often caused by amusement or nervousness
2. Producing soft, repeated laughter that suggests a playful or uneasy feeling
3. Expressing a quiet, joyful or slightly embarrassed reaction through repeated light laughs

Etymology: The most striking thing about "giggling" is how little anyone can pin down about where it came from. The verb "giggle" appears in English in the early 1500s, but its roots are murky, and the best guess is that it imitates the sound itself. Short, breathy, high-pitched laughter is hard to render in letters, so speakers reached for sounds that already resembled it. One candidate links the word to an older English dialect verb "gig," meaning to creak, which descended from Middle English "gigen," to make a creaking noise. The "-le" ending is a familiar suffix that marks repeated or continuing action, so a creak repeated over and over would become a giggle-like sequence. Another possibility points across the North Sea, where similar words exist in Dutch "giechelen," German Low German "giecheln," and several Frisian languages, all meaning to giggle. Those words are also thought to be onomatopoeic, so the two lines of descent may simply be separate echoes of the same sound.

Synonyms: laughing, snickering, chuckling

Antonyms: crying, sobbing