Titters

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To give forth a series of quick, muffled laughs often due to amusement or embarrassment; to share a soft laugh that is stifled, usually in a playful or coy manner; to respond with restrained laughter that conveys amusement without being loud or overt
2. To emit a series of gentle, suppressed laughs indicating mild amusement or shyness
3. To produce soft, brief laughter often expressing coyness or slight embarrassment

Etymology: "Titters" is the third-person singular present form of "titter," a verb for the soft, brief laughter that escapes someone trying not to laugh. The verb's roots are imitative: its sound mimics the quick, high-pitched noise it describes, and it has no clear, traceable ancestor in older English. The likeliest path runs through Middle English. Scholars reconstruct a lost Middle English verb "titeren," which would have been a frequentative of "titten," meaning "to waver." Frequentatives are verbs formed to express repeated or continued action, so "titeren" would have described something flickering back and forth. The Middle English noun "titering," attested in the sense of hesitation or vacillation, supports that link to wavering rather than laughter. The word's connection to the sense of trembling appears elsewhere in the family. Old Norse "titra" meant "to shake" or "to quiver," and the Proto-Germanic root "titrōną" meant "to tremble." Dialectal Swedish "tittra" carries the laughing sense, so the notion of a quick, shaky motion may have passed into describing a suppressed giggle. The word first appears in English recorded writing in the 1610s.

Synonyms: giggles, chuckles, snickers, laughs, chortles

Antonyms: cries, sobs, wails, weeps