Other forms: chirping, chirps, chirped
To chirp is to make the short high sound of a small bird. Birds chirping, a chirp from the hedge, chirping crickets.
It is short, high and repeated — sparrows, crickets and smoke alarms with failing batteries all chirp, and the last is what most people meet at three in the morning. Applied to a person it means speaking brightly and briefly. Note chirpy, meaning cheerful; and that chirp is imitative, as almost all bird-sound words are.
1verbchirpTo make the short high sound of a small bird.
“Sparrows chirped in the hedge outside my window every morning.”
2nounsoundSuch a sound.
“We heard the chirp of a cricket somewhere in the dark garden.”
chirp is a short high sound.
Middle English chirpen is imitative, one of a family with chirk and chirm. English forms these from the sound rather than borrowing them.
Middle English
*chirpen
English, today
chirp
Built from
From Middle English chirpen (attested only in the derivative Middle English chirpinge, cyrpynge, chyrypynge (“chirping”). Compare Middle English chirken and chirmen. More at chirk, chirm. Compare also Middle English chirten (“to smack, chirrup”). Compare German zirpen and Dutch tjirpen.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Birds