''chirrup'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260727004347-00-⌔

chirrup - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

chirrup (third-person singular simple present chirrups, present participle chirruping, simple past and past participle chirruped)

• (intransitive) To make a series of chirps, clicks, or clucks.
  • ✤ When other folks’ squirrels are at home and asleep, yourn keep in motion among the trees and chirrup and sing, in a way that even a Delaware gal can understand their music!¹
  • ✤ Face Eater Cat is a very happy, healthy animal who’s found her forever home, and she chirrups along when serenaded with eighties hits. It’s a match made in heaven.²
• (transitive) To express by chirping.
  • ✤ The crickets chirruped their song.
  • ✤ ‘Busy, Max?’ chirruped the familiar voice of his friend the inquiry agent—incurably brisk and debonair even after its ten miles’ journey along the wire.³
• (transitive) To quicken or animate by chirping.
  • ✤ to chirrup a horse

Noun

chirrup (plural chirrups)

• A series of chirps, clicks or clucks.
  • ✤ And here, if you like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus […]⁴
  • ✤ […] the music flashed by in delirious chirrups and stampings.⁵
  • ✤ the slight chirrup of a stoppered phial being opened⁶
• (figurative, derogatory) A brief, high-pitched, insignificant statement.
  • ✤ For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.⁷
  • ✤ “[…] Children, say ‘thank you’ to Mrs. Samuel Josephs.” Two subdued chirrups: “Thank you, Mrs. Samuel Josephs.”⁸

Etymology

Variant of chirp.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈt͡ʃɪɹəp/, /ˈt͡ʃɜɹəp/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -ɪɹəp, -ɜːɹəp

Printed 2026-07-27.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1841, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 17, in The Deerslayer: Or, the First War-path ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

2. 2022 July 23, “A She-Cat Tamed By The Purr Of Her Humans”, in Not Always Right ‎${}^{[2]}$, archived from the original on 11 December 2022: ↩

3. 1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries: ↩

4. 1845 Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth, Chirp the First,${}^{[3]}$ ↩

5. 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 9, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN: ↩

6. 1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries: ↩

7. 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC: ↩

8. 1918 June, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Prelude”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, page 2: ↩