different between jitterbug vs jitter

English

Etymology

jitter +? bug, after the 1934 Cab Calloway song Jitter Bug.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?d???t?(?)b??/

Noun

jitterbug (plural jitterbugs)

1. (colloquial) A nervous or jittery person.
2. (jazz) A jazz musician or aficionado.
3. (dance) An uptempo jazz or swing dance which embellishes on the two-step pattern and frequently incorporates acrobatic style swing steps.
4. Synonym of diddley bow (“type of stringed instrument”)

Synonyms

• (jazz musician): jazzbo, jazzman, jazzperson
• (nervous or jittery person): bundle of nerves, nervous wreck, worrywart; see also Thesaurus:worrier

Verb

jitterbug (third-person singular simple present jitterbugs, present participle jitterbugging, simple past and past participle jitterbugged)

1. To dance the jitterbug.

English

Etymology 1

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

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?d??t.?(?)/
• Rhymes: -?t?(r)

Noun

jitter (countable and uncountable, 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.
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.

Related terms

• jitterbug

Translations

Verb

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.

Synonyms

• fidget

Etymology 2

jit +? -er

Noun

jitter (plural jitters)

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

Anagrams

• trijet

Portuguese

Noun

jitter m (uncountable)

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