chortle (English)

Where does "chortle" come from?

The English noun 'chortle' is a literary creation coined by Lewis Carroll[1]. It was first completed in his poem Jabberwocky in 1855 and later introduced to the public in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass[1]. The word is formed as a blend of the words 'chuckle' and 'snort'[1].

Open questions

The etymology is considered a blend of chuckle and snort, though this origin is presented as a possibility rather than a certainty. [1]

Full etymology tree

chortle (English), 'A joyful, somewhat muffled laugh, rather like a snorting chuckle.'
- blend chuckle (English), 'To laugh quietly or inwardly.'
  - affix chuck (English), 'To make a clucking sound.'
    - inherited chukken (Middle English)
  - suffix -le (English), 'A frequentative suffix of verbs, indicating repetition or continuousness'
- blend snort (English), 'The sound made by exhaling or inhaling roughly through the nose.'
  - inherited snorten (Middle English), 'to snore, snort'
    - derived fnorten (Middle English), 'to snore, snort'
      - inherited *fnorettan (Old English), 'to snort'
        suffix -ettan (Old English), 'used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives (compare English -ate, -ize), frequently having a causative force.'
        affix fnora (Old English), 'a sneeze'
        inherited *fnoʀō (Proto-West Germanic), 'a sneeze'
        inherited *fnuzô (Proto-Germanic)
        derived *fneusaną (Proto-Germanic), 'to sneeze'
        derived *pnew- (Proto-Indo-European), 'to breathe, gasp'

Ancestors

chuckle (English)
snort (English)

Sources

Updated October 2026

More words starting with C

Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris