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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
titter
verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ As the teacher read the poem someone tittered.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ On the edge of the crowd a few young men tittered, whistled, applauded and stamped their feet.
▪ People riotously reel around here, fighting, fondling, tittering, clowning.
▪ The crowd tittered, but he looked at them and silenced the titters.
▪ This caused some of the other children to titter, quickly putting their hands over their mouths to stifle the sound.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Titter

Titter \Tit"ter\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Tittered; p. pr. & vb. n. Tittering.] [Probably of imitative origin.] To laugh with the tongue striking against the root of the upper teeth; to laugh with restraint, or without much noise; to giggle.

A group of tittering pages ran before.
--Longfellow.

Titter

Titter \Tit"ter\, n. A restrained laugh. ``There was a titter of . . . delight on his countenance.''
--Coleridge.

Titter

Titter \Tit"ter\, v. i. To seesaw. See Teeter.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
titter

1610s, "giggle in a suppressed or nervous way," probably of imitative origin. Related: Tittered; tittering. The noun is first recorded 1728.

Wiktionary
titter

n. 1 A nervous or repressed giggle. 2 (context slang vulgar chiefly in the plural English) A woman's breast. vb. 1 To laugh or giggle in a somewhat subdued manner. 2 (context obsolete English) To teeter; to seesaw.

WordNet
titter
  1. n. a nervous restrained laugh

  2. v. laugh nervously; "The girls giggled when the rock star came into the classroom" [syn: giggle]

Usage examples of "titter".

A few moments later, as the crowd held its aching sides and mopped its eyes, Samson the Strong Man hauled prone, soaked, semi-conscious, fearfully hallucinating Buffo off up the gangway that led to the foyer as little children gave him one last tittering poke for luck before he vanished as from the face of the earth, while the clowns ran round and round the tiers of seats, kissing babies, distributing bonbons and laughing, laughing, laughing to hide their broken hearts.

He took them as they came, with his rags flapping about his wildly gyrating limbs, and the gusty echoes of his tittering sweeping the room above the screams.

Several of the lasses tittered, then cast him knowing glances over their shoulders.

As the ladies pressed closer, touching, tittering, and gazing moonily up at him from big dewy eyes, he decided, on the basis of some of the touching, that he was far from deceased.

They took it to the naked phosphorescent thing on the carved golden pedestal, and the thing tittered and pawed at the bedding.

She saw the confusion in her bar, saw the madman eating the lizard, twitching and tittering, and she pounced on him, hitting him with the head of the long broom, as if he were a cow or a goat.

One could almost hear the tittering laughter of women: berouged strumpets, the storytellers leered, playthings of Yankee financiers, scarlet women who had packed their trunks with fine dresses they expected to wear at dances in Richmond.

Bensin Tomri was soon snoring contentedly, while Tee-ubo and Garth Breise argued and tittered about everything and nothing at all, and Danni continued to play dejarik, but against three computer opponents.

Somewhere dark sticky water was lapping at onyx piers, and once the shivery tinkle of raucous little bells pealed out to greet the insane titter of a naked phosphorescent thing which swam into sight, scrambled ashore, and climbed up to squat leeringly on a carved golden pedestal in the background.

Meyer children tittered, for by this time the hatred of the Vrouw Prinsloo for Hernan Pereira was the joke of the place.

Spellbound, the circle of pupils watched him with nary a titter at the appearance of an old and overweight wizard trying to tiptoe like an actor overplaying the part of a skulking thief.

Sulla had tricked himself out as the absent Clitumna, complete with fringed shawls, rings, and hennaed wig convoluted with sausagelike curls, and he constantly emitted uncanny imitations of her titters, her giggles, her loud whinnies of laughter.

Within that eternity, she heard the censorious murmurs, the titters of amusement and the throat-clearings of disapproval that had dogged her entire painful adolescence.

The death of good manners, Isadora thought, but she was too mortified to speak: Pursued by female titters, she tried to beat a hasty retreat.

He believed that he was offering her a compliment by differentiating her from the pretty girls who were allowed to dither charmingly, prevaricate and titter before they made an answer.