v. intr. A factitious word introduced by the author of Through the Looking-Glass, and jocularly used by others after him, app. with some suggestion of chuckle, and of snort. [Quite unconnected with CHURTLE.]
1872. ‘L. Carroll,’ Through Looking-Glass, i. 24.
| ‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? | |
| Come to my arms, my beamish boy! | |
| O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ | |
| He chortled in his joy. |
1873. All Y. Round, 20 Dec., 174/1. A couple of fussy hens clucking, and generally, ‘chortling’ in their absurd joy at having achieved the laying of an egg between them.
1876. Besant & Rice, Gold. Butterfly, III. ii. 25. It makes the cynic and the worldly-minded man to chuckle and chortle with an open joy.
1887. Athenæum, 3 Dec., 751/1. Its charm as a means of exciting cynical ‘chortling.’
1888. Daily News, 10 Jan., 5/2. So may chortle the Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.
