[app. echoic: cf. Sw. dial. tittra to giggle (Rietz); but perh. related to TITTLE v.1] intr. To laugh in a suppressed or covert way (often as a result of nervousness, or in affectation or ridicule); to giggle.
a. 1619. Fletcher, Wit without M., IV. ii. I could so titter now and laugh.
1657. [see TITTERING vbl. sb.].
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), To Titter, to giggle, or laugh wantonly.
1748. Smollett, Rod. Rand., xix. She went away tittering.
1792. A. Young, Trav. France, 117. I observed him several times playing off that small sort of wit, and flippant readiness to titter, which, I suppose, is a part of his character.
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., xxvii. Upon which Mrs. Nickleby tittered, and Sir Mulberry laughed, and Pyke and Pluck roared.
1864. Knight, Passages Work. Life, I. v. 221. The young women tittered when the old clerk indulged in his established joke.
b. trans. To utter or say with suppressed laughter.
1787. Minor, I. viii. 28. No, it shall never be tittered about as at the last races.
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., ix. ‘Never mind me,’ tittered Miss Squeers.
Hence Titteration nonce-wd., tittering.
1754. Richardson, Grandison (1781), V. xliii. 276. The holding up of a straw will throw me into a titteration.
1830. Amer. Whig, 15 Dec., 1/2. Every man in our ranks knows that Henry Clay is a mason—a fast anchored true blue mason,—hoodwinked, cable-towed, with his heels at right angles, and his chemise d’homme casseron dangling behind him, to the eternal titteration of all in the lodge and out of it!
