Chortle

//ˈt͡ʃɔɹtəl// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A joyful, somewhat muffled laugh, rather like a snorting chuckle.

    "He frequently interrupted himself with chortles while he told us his favorite joke."

  2. 2
    a soft partly suppressed laugh wordnet
  3. 3
    A similar sounding vocalisation of various birds.
Verb
  1. 1
    To laugh with a chortle or chortles. intransitive

    "The old fellow chortled as he recalled his youthful adventures."

  2. 2
    laugh quietly or with restraint wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
chucklechucklechucklebe in stitchesbelly laughboff

Example

More examples

""Chortle" was a nonce word when it was first created, but now it's a regular English word."

Etymology

Perhaps a blend of chuckle + snort. Coined by Lewis Carroll in his poem Jabberwocky, completed in 1855 but only introduced to the public in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass.

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