Other forms: chuckles, chuckling, chuckled
To chuckle is to laugh quietly to yourself. He chuckled, chuckling at the memory, a low chuckle.
It is private and low, which is what distinguishes it from a laugh: you chuckle at something in a book or in your own head. As a noun a chuckle is one such laugh. Note chortle, which Lewis Carroll invented by blending chuckle and snort; giggle, which is higher and less controlled; and guffaw, which is the loudest of the family.
1verbchuckleTo laugh quietly to yourself.
“He chuckled at something nobody else could see.”
2nounprivateA quiet private laugh.
“There was a chuckle from the back of the room.”
chuckle is a quiet laugh.
Chuckle comes from an older verb chuck, meaning to make a clucking noise, and is imitative. English has a whole family of laughing words built by ear — chuckle, cackle, giggle, snigger — none of which needed an etymology beyond the sound.
From chuck + -le.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA