Other forms: titters
To titter is to laugh quietly in a nervous or silly way. A small high sound somebody is trying to hold in.
It is the laugh of embarrassment rather than amusement, which is why it belongs to classrooms, weddings and any moment where laughing is not quite allowed. As a noun, a titter ran round the room is a standard phrase. It sits beside snigger, which is unkind, and giggle, which is happier. British comedy has used it for a century as a marker of prim discomfort.
1verbtitterTo laugh quietly in a nervous or self-conscious way.
“Somebody tittered at the back and was hushed.”
Middle English
*titeren
English, today
titter
First attested in the 1610s. Probably from Middle English titeren, titren (attested in Middle English titering (“hesitation, vacillation”)), probably a frequentative of Middle English titten (“to waver”), ultimately of imitative of the sound origin. Related to Old Norse titra (“to shake, shiver, quiver”) (if not borrowed from it), dialectal Swedish tittra (“to snicker”). Compare also Proto-Germanic titrōną (“to tremble”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 13 of A Man Called Ove.
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