chortle
A joyful, somewhat muffled laugh, rather like a snorting chuckleA joyful, somewhat muffled laugh, rather like a snorting chuckle.
Recorded US: Dvortygirl, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
» The audience chortled because that’s funny.
Tatoeba contributors · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
2 sensesA joyful, somewhat muffled laugh, rather like a snorting chuckle.
He frequently interrupted himself with chortles while he told us his favorite joke.
Glucksen
A similar sounding vocalisation of various birds.
- a soft partly suppressed laugh
Examples
3 sentencesThe audience chortled because that’s funny.
Alfred chortled with delight, and clapped his hands before his face.
"Chortle" was a nonce word when it was first created, but now it's a regular English word.
Translations
4 languagesBy meaning 1
Origin
Perhaps a blend of chuckle + snort. Coined by Lewis Carroll in his poem Jabberwocky, complPerhaps 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.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.