dither

[dihth -er] /ˈdɪð ər/
noun
1.
a trembling; vibration.
2.
a state of flustered excitement or fear.
verb (used without object)
3.
to act irresolutely; vacillate.
4.
North England. to tremble with excitement or fear.
Origin
1640-50; variant of didder (late Middle English diddere); cf. dodder
Related forms
ditherer, noun
dithery, adjective
Examples from the web for dithering
  • Such dithering is to confidence what termites are to wooden roof beams.
  • What amazes me is how this dithering continues to be sold to the public as meaningful scientific research.
  • If you look closely at a picture, every few seconds you may notice the background dithering fractionally from side to side.
  • To have a dilemma means that you would have some dithering about whether or not to tell.
  • Facing up to that now rather than by continual dithering will be painful.
  • If a scientist believes there is no free will, then why the dithering.
  • Yet the government has been dithering about whether or not to levy fines on companies that have not filled their training quota.
  • And the protracted dithering was damaging to morale.
  • More dithering and faux diplomacy will only result in a deeper hole.
  • After a year of dithering, he is now leaping into action.
British Dictionary definitions for dithering

dither

/ˈdɪðə/
verb (intransitive)
1.
(mainly Brit) to be uncertain or indecisive
2.
(mainly US) to be in an agitated state
3.
to tremble, as with cold
noun
4.
(mainly Brit) a state of indecision
5.
a state of agitation
Derived Forms
ditherer, noun
dithery, adjective
Word Origin
C17: variant of C14 (northern English dialect) didder, of uncertain origin
Word Origin and History for dithering

dither

v.

1640s, "to quake, tremble," phonetic variant of Middle English didderen (late 14c.), of uncertain origin. The sense of "vacillate, be anxious" is from 1819. Related: Dithered; dithering.

dithering in Technology

data, algorithm
A technique used in quantisation processes such as graphics and audio to reduce or remove the correlation between noise and signal.
Dithering is used in computer graphics to create additional colors and shades from an existing palette by interspersing pixels of different colours. On a monochrome display, areas of grey are created by varying the proportion of black and white pixels. In colour displays and printers, colours and textures are created by varying the proportions of existing colours. The different colours can either be distributed randomly or regularly. The higher the resolution of the display, the smoother the dithered colour will appear to the eye.
Dithering doesn't reduce resolution. There are three types: regular dithering which uses a very regular predefined pattern; random dither where the pattern is a random noise; and pseudo random dither which uses a very large, very regular, predefined pattern.
Dithering is used to create patterns for use as backgrounds, fills and shading, as well as for creating halftones for printing. When used for printing is it very sensitive to paper properties. Dithering can be combined with rasterising. It is not related to anti-aliasing.
(2003-07-20)