Giggle

How to spell giggle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce giggle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does giggle mean?

1. verbTo laugh in a light, repeated, half-suppressed way.
2. nounA short, light, half-suppressed laugh.

Giggle in a sentence

• verb

  The children began to giggle during the quiet part of the assembly.

• noun

  A nervous giggle escaped her during the interview.

• verb

  She tried not to giggle when her colleague mispronounced the client's name.

• noun

  He let out a quiet giggle at the typo in the report.

Where does giggle come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Giggle is an imitative word, coined in the late 1500s to echo the very sound it names: a series of short, light, half-suppressed laughs. It belongs to a small family of English words built with the frequentative ending -le, which signals a repeated or rapid little action, the same ending found in 'wriggle', 'sparkle', and 'dribble'. The 'gig' part has no Latin or Greek pedigree; it simply mimics the breathy, bubbling noise of stifled laughter, so the word is essentially sound made into spelling. Similar echoic forms appear in other Germanic languages, such as Dutch 'giechelen' and German 'gickeln', which suggests the noise was rendered in much the same way across the region. The spelling trap is the soft-sounding but doubled 'gg' followed by -le, an ending that an adult might be tempted to write as -el.

How the word is built

• gig- (imitative sound base)
• -le (frequentative suffix marking a small, repeated action)