Other forms: giggles, giggling, giggled
A giggle is a small, high, silly laugh you cannot quite hold in. Two children at the back of a classroom, a nervous laugh in a lift, someone breaking down in the middle of a serious speech.
It is both verb and noun: they giggled all through the film; a giggle escaped before she could stop it. The word carries childishness with it, so calling a grown man's laugh a giggle is a small insult. Get the giggles means a fit you cannot stop, and in British English doing something for a giggle means doing it for fun. A chuckle is lower and warmer, a snigger is unkind and half hidden, a titter is nervous — giggle sits at the light end of that row.
1verbgiggleTo laugh in a light, high, half-swallowed way.
“The two of them giggled all the way through the ceremony.”
synonyms: titter, snicker
2nounshortA short light laugh of that kind.
“A giggle escaped before she could stop it.”
3noundoneSomething done purely for fun.
“We only entered the race for a giggle.”
giggle is a kind of laugh.
Nobody can pin giggle down, and that suits it. The best guess is that the word simply copies the sound, first written in the early 1500s. A second trail leads to the dialect word gig, to creak, from Middle English gigen, to make a creaking sound. Dutch giechelen and German gickeln mean the same thing and sound just as silly — probably because they were all imitating the same noise.
Middle English
gigen — to make a creaking sound
English, today
giggle
Built from
Early 16th century, probably of imitative of the sound origin. Or, perhaps a frequentative based on dialectal English gig (“to creak”), from Middle English gigen (“to make a creaking sound”) le; or perhaps of Dutch - or Low German - origin: compare stq güüchelje (“to giggle”), West Frisian giechelje (“to giggle”), Dutch giechelen (“to giggle”), German Low German giecheln (“to giggle”), dialectal German giggln, gigglen (“to giggle”), German gickeln (“to giggle”). All of these words are likely onomatopoeic as well. Also compare gsw Guege (“fiddle”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Everyday Verbs, A Man Called Ove, Body Language & Gestures
First appears in chapter 12 of A Man Called Ove.
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