Chittering

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The sound of a chitter.

    "Another bird quickly learned to imitate the song of a canary that was mated with it, but as the parrakeet improved in the performance the canary degenerated, and came at last to mingle the other bird's harsh chitterings with its own proper music."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of chitter form-of, gerund, participle, present

Example

More examples

"Another bird quickly learned to imitate the song of a canary that was mated with it, but as the parrakeet improved in the performance the canary degenerated, and came at last to mingle the other bird's harsh chitterings with its own proper music."

Etymology

From Middle English chitering, chiterynge, equivalent to chitter + -ing.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.