Other forms: dithering, dithered, dithers
To dither is to hesitate and fail to make up your mind. Stop dithering, dithering over the decision, in a dither.
It is always a criticism, and it means the delay is the fault rather than the difficulty. In digital imaging and audio, dither is deliberate noise added to hide the steps between levels, which is a real and useful technique with the same name.
1verbditherTo hesitate and fail to make up your mind.
“Stop dithering and choose a film, or we'll miss the start!”
dither is a hesitating.
A variant of didder, from Middle English dideren, to tremble.
Middle English
dideren — to tremble
English, today
dither
Variant of didder, from Middle English dideren (“to tremble”). Compare Middle English bididren, bididdren (“to seduce, deceive”), from Old English bedidrian, bedyderian (“to deceive, trick”). Alternatively, perhaps with expressive voicing from titeren, from Proto-Germanic titrōną. If so, then a a doublet of teeter and cognate with Old High German zittarōn (German zittern) and Old Norse titra (Faroese titra, Icelandic titra). Alternatively an unrelated reduplicative imitative of the sound.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA