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''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 ‎: ↩

  2. 2022 July 23, “A She-Cat Tamed By The Purr Of Her Humans”, in Not Always Right ‎, 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, ↩

  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: ↩

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Secondary

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