Twitter

How to spell twitter

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce twitter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does twitter mean?

1. verbTo make a series of light, high-pitched chirping sounds, as small birds do.
2. verbTo talk rapidly and excitedly about trivial matters.
3. nounA series of short, high sounds, or a state of nervous excitement.

Twitter in a sentence

• verb

  The sparrows twitter in the hedge at first light each morning.

• verb

  The guests began to twitter about the wedding seating plan.

• noun

  A constant twitter of birdsong filled the garden at dawn.

• verb

  Swallows twitter noisily as they gather on the telephone wires.

• verb

  The children would twitter happily through the whole car journey.

• noun

  The office was in a twitter over the surprise inspection.

Where does twitter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is an echoic, or imitative, word: its sound was built to mimic the thing it names, the rapid light chirping of small birds. It appears in Middle English around the late 1300s as twiteren, formed in the same way as similar sound words in neighbouring Germanic languages, such as the Dutch kwetteren and German zwitschern, all of which arose independently to copy bird noise. The -er ending here is the frequentative suffix, signalling a quick repeated action, so the form literally suggests chirp after chirp after chirp. From the literal sense of birds chirping, English extended the word by the 1600s to people who chatter rapidly or excitedly, and to a nervous fluttering state, as in the phrase 'in a twitter'. Because the word was coined for its sound rather than borrowed from a foreign root, its spelling has stayed plain and regular, with no silent letters or hidden traps.

How the word is built

• twitt- (imitative root suggesting a light chirp)
• -er (frequentative verb suffix indicating repeated action)