chuckling

Pluralchucklings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of chuckle.

   The audience was chuckling at the comedian's dry wit.

   Chuckling softly, he folded the letter and set it aside.

   Note

   One -ing form does two jobs here. It is the progressive participle in "the audience was chuckling" and the gerund in "his chuckling woke the baby." The silent e of chuckle drops before the suffix. In older texts, keep the verb's archaic senses in mind: chuckling could mean a hen clucking to call her chicks, or fondling and pampering someone, with no laughter at all. The countable use belongs to the noun for a single laugh.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A single quiet, half-suppressed laugh.

   A soft chuckling came from behind the closed office door.

   The old man answered the question with a knowing chuckling.

   Similarchortle, laugh, titter

   Note

   Here a gerund has become a full count noun: it takes an article and a plural. Henry Sheehan, in the Chicago Reader in 1988, writes of "the chucklings of the one hipster" breaking a shocked silence. That plural is the test that separates it from the verbal gerund, which cannot be counted. The shorter noun chuckle covers the same ground, while chuckling keeps more of the feel of laughter in progress.

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