jitter

English

Etymology 1

Possibly alteration of chitter (“tremble, shiver”), from Middle English chittern (“to twitter, chatter”). Ultimately onomatopoeic; compare didder and teeter as well as German zittern.

Pronunciation

(UK) IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒɪtə(ɹ)/
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒɪtɚ/, [ˈd͡ʒɪɾɚ]
Rhymes: -ɪtə(ɹ)
Audio (UK) (file)

Noun

jitter (countable and uncountable, plural jitters)

A nervous action; a tic.
(chiefly in the plural, often with "the") A state of nervousness.
That creepy movie gave me the jitters.
- 2010 December 29, Chris Whyatt, “Chelsea 1 - 0 Bolton”, in BBC‎:
  But Bolton deserve real credit, seeking to take advantage of their jitters at every opportunity in typically determined fashion.
- 2014, Ian Black, "Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis", The Guardian, 27 November 2014:
  It is a sunny morning in Amman and the three uniformed judges in Jordan’s state security court are briskly working their way through a pile of slim grey folders on the bench before them. Each details the charges against 25 or so defendants accused of supporting the fighters of the Islamic State (Isis), now rampaging across Syria and Iraq under their sinister black banners and sending nervous jitters across the Arab world.
- 2022 May 5, Clinton, Bill, Bill Clinton talks Arkansas politics & Ukraine Full interview‎, THV11, archived from the original on 05 May 2022, 0:00 from the start:
  Interviewer: How do you feel coming back here? What is constantly evoked in you when you see your center again back in Little Rock?
  Clinton: Well first of all if I don't come back about once a month I start to get the jitters.
(telecommunications) An abrupt and unwanted variation of one or more signal characteristics.
- 1956, LIFE (volume 41, number 11, page 41)
  Now you have mirror-clear TV without picture flopover, jitter, tear!
(data visualization) A random positioning of data points to avoid visual overlap.

Related terms

jitterbug

Translations

nervous action; a tic

Bulgarian: треперене (bg) n (treperene), тик m (tik)
Czech: třas m, třes (cs) m, chvění (cs) n
Finnish: nykiminen
French: tic nerveux m
Georgian: ნერვული აღგზნება (nervuli aɣgzneba), ნერვული შეტოკება (nervuli šeṭoḳeba)
German: Zittern n
Portuguese: tique nervoso m
Spanish: tic nervioso m

state of nervousness; the jitters

Bulgarian: нервност (bg) f (nervnost)
Finnish: jännitys (fi)
Georgian: ნერვიულობა (nerviuloba)
German: Nervosität (de) f, Aufgeregtheit f

telecommunications: abrupt and unwanted variation of signal characteristics

Dutch: interferentie (nl)
Finnish: värinä (fi), huojunta (fi), jitter (fi)
French: gigue (fr) f
Portuguese: jitter (pt) m
Russian: дрожание (ru) n (drožanije), джиттер (ru) m (džitter)

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Translations to be checked

Spanish: ^{(please verify)} temblores (es), (2) ^{(please verify)} escalofríos (es)

Verb

jitter (third-person singular simple present jitters, present participle jittering, simple past and past participle jittered)

(intransitive) To be nervous.
(data visualization) To position data points randomly to avoid visual overlap.

Synonyms

fidget

Translations

To be nervous

German: bibbern (de), zittern (de)

Etymology 2

jit +‎ -er

Noun

jitter (plural jitters)

(computing) A program or routine that performs jitting; a just-in-time compiler.

Anagrams

trijet

Portuguese

Noun

jitter m (uncountable)

(telecommunications) jitter (abrupt and unwanted variation of signal characteristics)