Other forms: tweeted, tweets, tweeting
To tweet is to make a light high bird call. Birds tweeting, a tweet from the hedge, tweeting at dawn.
It is the standard word for the small sharp call of a small bird, and it is simply what the sound is. From 2006 it also meant posting on Twitter, and for about fifteen years that sense was so dominant that the bird one nearly disappeared — the platform's renaming has quietly given it back. Note twitter, which is the same imitative family.
1verbtweetTo make a light high bird call.
“Little birds tweeted in the hedge outside my window.”
2nounnounSuch a call.
“The first tweet of the blackbird woke me before dawn.”
tweet is a bird call.
The word is imitative of the sound. Twitter is from the same family, and the social media senses were named from the bird rather than the other way about.
imitative of the sound of the sound made by a bird. Compare twitter. The social media senses evolved from earlier Twitter update, twit, twitter.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA