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3465 25th Street, Suite 17
San Francisco, CA 94110 | (noun, intransitive verb, transitive verb)
[CHOR-tl] 
noun
1. a noisy joyful laugh, often featuring a snort: "He interrupted himself with loud chortles as he told us his favorite joke."
intransitive and transitive verb
2. to laugh or express with a chortle
additional noun form: chortler
Origin:
Approximately 1872; coined by Lewis Carroll in "Through the Looking Glass," probably a blend of chuckle and snort. In action:
"Mr. MacGowan still possesses the morbid streak he has had since his days as a punk rocker in his first band, the Nipple Erectors. In another tangent, speaking about 'The Butcher Boy,' Neil Jordan's film version of Patrick McCabe's darkly satirical novel about a boy's murder spree in County Monaghan, he said with a rasping chortle, 'It's great if you don't actually know everything that happens in every Irish town every day of the week.' He said he loved Mr. Jordan's adaptation of Mr. McCabe's 'Breakfast on Pluto,' about a London drag queen in trouble with the I.R.A. in the 1970s. He said it brought 'back nostalgia for mass killings and bombings, you know what I mean?'
Hours later the Pogues were onstage at the Avalon, playing to a sold-out house. Fans were carried aloft over the mosh pit, as the eight-man band pounded out frenzied jigs and reels with a controlled fury. Workouts like 'Fiesta' and 'Sally MacLennan' prompted stomping and fist pumping; 'Dirty Old Town,' a tune by the folk singer Ewan MacColl and a longtime Pogues signature, became a deafening singalong. More than once Mr. MacGowan, staggering, knocked the microphone off its stand or knocked the stand over altogether, to good-natured laughter. But his voice was sure, and his bond with the audience unmistakable."
Andy Webster. "A Ramble Through the Mind of the Pogues' Poet," The New York Times (March 13, 2007).
"Elephants travel considerable distances to scarf douka fruits when they're ripe and falling, and the well-worn elephant trails we'd been following ourselves seemed to run like traplines from one douka to another. Take away those mature, fruiting trees (by selective logging, for instance) and the local elephant population would lose part of its seasonal diet. But for now the grand old doukas were still here, showing evidence of recent attention (fresh elephant dung, gnaw marks in the bark), and so were the elephant trails. We hit another short stretch of good walking, then heard another group of monkeys.
This time, in response to the eagle whistle, there came a low, grunting chortle: chooga- chooga-chooga-chooga-chooga. Having heard it many times over the months, even I could recognize that as the alarm call of the gray-cheeked mangabey, Lophocebus albigena, an-other species dependent on fruiting trees. 'It looks like the old gray-cheeks are gonna make it to the beach after all,' Fay said. 'That's cool. I was a little worried, 'cause we hadn't seen them for three or four days.' The presence of Lophocebus albigena, overlapping here with its red-capped cousin, became another notebook entry. Then again we walked�westward, toward the beach�but only for five minutes, until the black lake stopped us cold."
David Quammen. "End of the Line: Megatransect Part 3," National Geographic.com (August 2001).
"Speaking of comedy, that's a funny word, lad. 'Macaroons.' Makes you chuckle just to say it, what?
Ha. Uh, yeah. Funny. So --
Fallopian tubes.
Huh?
Another funny word. And monkey. Ha! You just can't say monkey without a good chortle!"
King Kaufman. "The sound of one horse clopping," [Satire: interview with the horse from Monty Python and the Holy Grail] Salon.com (June 16, 2001).
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