Tweet Was a Bird Sound First
A tweet is a bird's short high call. A social media platform took the word and briefly changed its main meaning.
A tweet is the short high-pitched call of a small bird. The word is imitative, recorded from the 1840s, and it spent a century and a half meaning only that. A social media platform launched in 2006 borrowed it for short messages, and within a few years dictionaries added the new sense — one of the fastest such additions on record. The platform later renamed itself, leaving the word in an unusual position: widely understood but no longer tied to the product that spread it.
- A bird's call. *The tweet of a sparrow.*
- To make that sound. *Birds tweeting.*
- A short online post. *Post a tweet.*
- Tweeter — a treble speaker. *A tweeter.*
- Imitative. *From the 1840s.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | tweet | A tweet. |
| Verb | tweet | Tweet. |
| Past | tweeted | Tweeted. |
| Agent | tweeter | A tweeter. |
| Related | Twitter. |
- A tweet came from the hedge.Bird.
- Birds tweeted at dawn.Verb.
- A tweeter handles high frequencies.Audio.
Why a speaker is called a tweeter
- Tweeter — handles high frequencies, named from a bird's call
- Woofer — handles low frequencies, named from a dog's bark
- Mid-range — the frequencies between, prosaically named
- Subwoofer — the very lowest frequencies
- The animal names date from 1930s audio engineering
Imitative of a bird's call, recorded from the 1840s, related to *twitter*.
Why is a high-frequency speaker called a tweeter?
From the bird's call. The matching low-frequency driver is a woofer, named from a dog's bark. Both date from 1930s audio engineering.
How quickly did the online sense enter dictionaries?
Within a few years of the platform's 2006 launch, unusually fast for a new sense of an existing word.