jitter

Possibly alteration of chitter (“tremble, shiver”), from Middle English chittern (“to twitter, chatter”)

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈdʒɪt.ə(ɹ)/
• Rhymes: -ɪtə(r)

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

jitter (plural jitters)

1. A nervous action; a tic.
2. (chiefly in the plural, often with "the") A state of nervousness.

   That creepy movie gave me the jitters.

   • 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.

   • 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.

3. (telecommunications) An abrupt and unwanted variation of one or more signal characteristics.
4. (data visualization) A random positioning of data points to avoid visual overlap.

• jitterbug

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

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

• fidget

jit +‎ -er

jitter (plural jitters)

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

• trijet

jitter m (uncountable)

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