Other forms: hiccups, hiccuping, hiccupping
To hiccup is to make a sharp involuntary sound in the throat. Get hiccups, cure the hiccups, hiccup loudly.
It is a spasm of the diaphragm followed by the vocal cords snapping shut, which is what makes the sound. Nobody knows what it is for, and none of the folk cures has good evidence. Figuratively a hiccup is a small temporary setback: a hiccup in the schedule. Note the spelling hiccough, which is a mistaken form still occasionally seen.
1verbhiccupTo make a sharp involuntary sound in the throat.
“He drank his fizzy drink too quickly and started to hiccup.”
2nounsmallA small temporary setback.
“Apart from a small hiccup with the sound system, the concert went perfectly.”
hiccup is an involuntary sound.
Hiccup is an alteration of earlier hicket, from hic, imitating the sound, plus a diminutive ending. The spelling hiccough came from a wrong guess about cough.
From earlier hickop, alteration of earlier hicket, hyckock, from hic (imitative of the sound) + -ock. Akin to Scots hick, hix (“hiccup”), West Frisian hik (“hiccup”), Dutch hik (“hiccup”), Middle Low German hükup, huckup, hueckup (modern Low German hick (“hiccup”)), German hicksen (“to hiccup”), gsw Hidsgi (“hiccup”), Danish hikke (“hiccup”), Swedish hicka (“hiccup”), hicka (“to hiccup”), Icelandic hiksti (“hiccup”). Displaced yex, from Middle English yexen, ȝisken, ȝixen, ȝoxen (“to hiccup”), from Old English ġiscian, ġeocsian (“to hiccup”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA