Word.ws English Dictionary

chuckling

chuckling is the present participle and gerund of chuckle.

Meaning of chuckle

Verb

chuckle (third-person singular simple present chuckles, present participle chuckling, simple past and past participle chuckled)

  1. To laugh quietly or inwardly.
  2. (transitive) To communicate through chuckling.
    • She chuckled her assent to my offer as she got in the car.
  3. (archaic, intransitive) To make the sound of a chicken; to cluck.
  4. (archaic, transitive) To call together, or call to follow, as a hen calls her chickens; to cluck.
    • if these Birds are within distance, here's that will chuckle 'em together1690, [John] Dryden, Don Sebastian, King of Portugal: […], London: […] Jo. Hindmarsh, […], →OCLC, (please specify the page number)
  5. (archaic, transitive) To fondle; to indulge or pamper.
    Synonyms:
    grope, coddle

See all 7 meanings of chuckle

Noun

chuckling (plural chucklings)

  1. (gerund) An instance in which someone chuckles
    • The shocked silence of the grown-ups is disturbed by the chucklings of the one hipster among them[…].1988 January 22, Henry Sheehan, “Little Boy Blue”, in Chicago Reader

Forms of chuckling

pluralchucklings

Questions about chuckling

What does chuckling mean?
Chuckling means an instance in which someone chuckles.
What is chuckling the present participle and gerund of?
Chuckling is the present participle and gerund of chuckle.
What part of speech is chuckling?
Chuckling is a noun.
What is the plural of chuckling?
The plural of chuckling is chucklings.

Words near chuckling in the dictionary

  1. chuckler
  2. chucklers
  3. chuckles
  4. chucklesome
  5. chuckleworthy
  6. chuckling
  7. chucklingly
  8. chucklings
  9. chuckly
  10. chuckmuck
  11. chuckmucks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chuckling (page history and authors); chuckle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “chuckling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chuckling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.