Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To utter a succession of light chirping or tremulous sounds; chirrup.
  • intransitive verb To speak rapidly and in a tremulous manner.
  • intransitive verb To giggle nervously; titter.
  • intransitive verb To tremble with nervous agitation or excitement.
  • intransitive verb To utter or say with a twitter.
  • noun The light chirping sound made by certain birds.
  • noun A similar sound, especially light, tremulous speech or laughter.
  • noun Agitation or excitement; flutter.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds, as a bird; sing in bird-notes; chirp.
  • To titter; giggle.
  • To quiver; tremble; palpitate; hence, to be in a flutter or fright.
  • To sing or utter in bird-notes; chirp out.
  • To spin unevenly.
  • noun One who twits or reproaches.
  • noun A chirp or series of chirps, as of a bird, especially the swallow.
  • noun A fit of laughter; a titter.
  • noun A tremble; a flutter; a general excitement; a pother: as, to be in (or of) a twitter, or to be in or on the twitters.
  • noun A gardeners' name for certain plant-deformations caused by insects, notably a curious bunching and twisting of the carnation-plant caused by the work of anthomyiid larvæ. Some forms of twitter are caused by thrips and others by plantlice.
  • noun A shred; a fragment: used in the plural.
  • noun The refuse or residuum of the case of the spermwhale, a gummy and thready substance left when the case is squeezed.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who twits, or reproaches; an upbraider.
  • noun The act of twittering; a small, tremulous, intermitted noise, as that made by a swallow.
  • noun A half-suppressed laugh; a fit of laughter partially restrained; a titter; a giggle.
  • noun A slight trembling or agitation of the nerves.
  • transitive verb To utter with a twitter.
  • intransitive verb To make a succession of small, tremulous, intermitted noises.
  • intransitive verb To make the sound of a half-suppressed laugh; to titter; to giggle.
  • intransitive verb To have a slight trembling of the nerves; to be excited or agitated.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The sound of a succession of chirps as uttered by birds.
  • verb intransitive To utter a succession of bird's chirps.
  • verb intransitive, transitive (of a person) To talk in an excited or nervous manner.
  • verb neologism, Internet To use the microblogging service Twitter.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a series of chirps
  • verb make high-pitched sounds, as of birds

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English twiteren, ultimately of imitative origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Imitating the sound.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Follow Wordie on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Wordie.

    September 4, 2007

  • "But we should understand that for many ideas enabled by the Internet, small is the new big." - January 3, 2008, 3:45 pm

    Twitter, Firefox and Big Ideas That Are Small Companies

    By Saul Hansell

    Tags: Business Models, firefox, microblogging, Mozilla, twitter

    February 6, 2008

  • Follow Jrome on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jrome

    February 6, 2008

  • A leading lexicographer uses twitter almost exclusively as a simple "word of the day" catcher. It's pretty cool. You can follow her (emckean) or, if using a mobile or IM, just track wotd to get her posts and a bunch from other people who are doing the same thing. If you send your wotd to twitter preface it with "wotd:" and anyone tracking that keyword will see it too.

    March 19, 2008

  • What Are We Twittering?

    May 24, 2008

  • What's the logic behind the Wordie Twitterfeed?

    December 31, 2008

  • I guess it makes people go see lists/words/comments that John finds particularly remarkable...?

    Or do you mean the Twitter Wordiefeed?

    December 31, 2008

  • Yes, I mean how does a word/list get chosen to be featured on the Wordiefeed?

    I like to think there's a method behind the madness :)

    December 31, 2008

  • What? Logic on Wordie? Have you gone mad, kewpid? ;->

    January 1, 2009

  • I confess, the holidays have made me a little light-headed ;)

    January 2, 2009

  • There, there. It happens to all of us.

    January 5, 2009

  • Does anybody on Wordie use a Chumby for Twitter?

    February 18, 2009

  • And follow me - @nettys

    March 26, 2009

  • Twitter horror.

    March 26, 2009

  • Haha

    March 26, 2009

  • Obsessive-compulsive Twittering

    March 27, 2009

  • It's worth a song. I agree. Don't go if you hate YouTube, too. Some people do.

    March 28, 2009

  • I promptly twittered about that youtube vid after seeing it :p

    March 28, 2009

  • Best definition ever: “Twitter seems to be, first and foremost, an online haven where teenagers making drugs can telegraph secret code words to arrange gang fights and orgies. It also functions as a vehicle for teasing peers until they commit suicide.�?

    McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Truly Groundbreaking Marketing Research: Understanding Twitter, by Dan Kennedy, March 31, 2009

    April 16, 2009

  • Ha!

    April 17, 2009

  • Dogs tweet at twitter, too.

    June 17, 2009

  • Been down all morning, and Facebook is under attack too. I'm feeling kind of left out that Wordie wasn't targeted.

    August 7, 2009

  • SSSSH!!! They might hear you!

    August 7, 2009

  • Aha! So I wasn't the only one being driven crazy by Facebook!

    August 7, 2009

  • A pretty serious breach of Twitter etiquette.

    September 2, 2009

  • Here's a retweet posted on Twitter by @SonofGroucho: "RT @MrsStephenFry: Finally, I've created a healthy social network site - I Can't Believe It's Not Twitter." (Fri, Nov 5, 2010)

    November 6, 2010