[f. as prec. + -ING2.] That twitters.
1. Chirping lightly and tremulously, as a bird.
1827. Hood, Mids. Fairies, xxxi. We gather in loud choirs the twittering race.
1857. J. Hamilton, Less. fr. Gt. Biog. (1859), 172. New leaves are on the trees and twittering broods are in the nest.
2. Trembling, quivering; trembling with excitement or the like, in a flutter. Now dial.
1681. W. Robertson, Phraseol. Gen. (1693), 1257. I am in a twittering case, inter sacrum saxumque sto.
1821. Clare, Vill. Minstr., II. 75. The sun now sinks behind the woodland green, And twittering spangles glow the leaves between.
1884. Stevenson, Lett. to Henley, Nov. (1899), I. 335. Hardly able to come downstairs for twittering knees.
Hence Twitteringly adv.
1853. Knickerbocker, XLI. June, 553. Once more they [swallows] twitteringly pounce into the chimney of my house.
1860. Russell, Diary India, I. xvi. 255. A large zigzag fire of musketry goes twitteringly along the lines of the trenches.
1897. Ella MacMahon, Touchstone of Life, xxii. 240. Even the two young men who held him firmly, felt the flesh on their bones creep slowly, and the hair on their heads stir twitteringly.
1910. Mary R. Rinehart, Window at the White Cat, iii. 37. She wore a new lace cap, and was twitteringly excited.
