snigger

plural sniggers · alternative snicker

1. IrelandUKA partly suppressed or broken laugh.

   Here the unfeeling Toad broke into a snigger, and then pulled himself together and tried to look particularly solemn.

   1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 255

2. IrelandUKA sly or snide laugh.

present singular third person sniggers · participle present sniggering · participle past sniggered · past sniggered · alternative snicker

1. IrelandUKintransitiveTo emit a snigger.

   That said, I still find it hard not to snigger when I hear [Travis] Kelce described as being the Kansas City Chiefs' tight end.

   2025 August 30, Jo Ellison, “Taylor Swift is entering her conservative era”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 20

   3 more examples

   […]presently the Mole's spirits revived again, and he was even able to give some straight back-talk to a couple of moorhens who were sniggering to each other about his bedraggled appearance.

   1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, pages 21–22

   Peter, after the manner of man at the breakfast table, had allowed half his kedgeree to get cold and was sniggering over a letter. Sophia looked at him sharply. The only letter she had received was from her mother. Sophia's mother was not a humourist.

   1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC

   It’s easy to snigger at foreigners and their funny, not-quite-English words – but how many of us realise that our own language contains plenty of the same thing the other way around?

   2016 October 13, Matthew Anderson, “The foreign words that seem like English – but aren’t”, in BBC, archived from the original on 14 Nov 2020