Meaning
To laugh in a breathy, gleeful, chuckling-snorting way that signals delight, often at something clever, absurd, or satisfying; as a noun, a laugh of that kind. Playful and light in tone, it is one of the very few nonsense-poem coinages to become ordinary English vocabulary. Playful and light; usually describes delighted amusement rather than mockery. Regional use: General English (coined by Lewis Carroll, England, 1871).
Origin
Lewis Carroll coined chortle in the poem Jabberwocky, in the line 'He chortled in his joy', in Through the Looking-Glass, published in 1871. It is a blend of chuckle and snort, which is how the Oxford English Dictionary entry cited in accounts of the poem defines it, and Carroll used it as a verb; the noun sense of a gleeful laugh is recorded from 1903. Along with galumph, it is the standout survivor among the Jabberwocky coinages, absorbed into standard dictionaries and now used with no sense of its nonsense-verse origin.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- chortled
- chortler
- chortles
- chortling
Usage Examples
- The toddler chortled as the puppy chased its own tail.
- Grandfather would chortle quietly over the crossword whenever he found a pun.
- A smug chortle escaped her before she could apologize for spoiling the ending.