What does dithering mean?
Dithering is the act of hesitating indecisively — the present participle of the verb 'to dither', which describes someone who wavers between options rather than committing to one. It carries a gently critical connotation, suggesting that time is being wasted through vacillation, as in 'stop dithering and choose'. The word has a striking second life in technology: in digital imaging and audio, dithering is the deliberate addition of small amounts of noise to a signal to mask quantization errors, preventing ugly banding in colour gradients or distortion in quiet audio passages. This technical sense was borrowed precisely because of the original meaning — the added noise makes the signal 'tremble' slightly, in a beneficial way. Whether describing a hesitant colleague or a clever graphics algorithm, dithering captures the idea of fine-grained wavering, making it equally at home in everyday conversation and specialist engineering vocabulary.
Being unable to decide or acting with hesitant indecision; wasting time by wavering between alternatives.
"He spent the whole afternoon dithering about whether to accept the job offer."
A technique in digital imaging and audio processing in which noise is intentionally added to a signal to reduce visible banding or audible distortion caused by quantization.
"The printer applies dithering to simulate smooth grey tones using only black ink."
Almost always used attributively in this technical sense, as in 'dithering pattern' or 'dithering algorithm'.
Computer scientists borrowed a centuries-old word for trembling hands to name the trick that makes digital photos' colour gradients look smooth — every time you admire a gradient that doesn't banded into stripes, you're looking at dithering.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of dithering
The verb 'dither' derives from the Middle English dialectal form 'didderen', meaning to tremble or quiver, and emerged in its modern sense of indecisive hesitation in the early twentieth century, particularly in American English. The image-processing sense arose in the mid-twentieth century, when engineers adopted the word because adding noise causes a signal to 'tremble' minutely, smoothing out harsh transitions. A related Germanic verb, 'dodder', shares the same family of words evoking unsteady movement.
Related word forms
How dithering is actually used
As a verb form it is informal-to-neutral and often mildly critical, implying wasted time through indecision. The technical computing sense is neutral jargon common in graphics, printing, and audio engineering, and is almost always used attributively ('a dithering algorithm', 'dithering pattern').
Easily confused with dithering
'Withering' means shrivelling or devastatingly harsh (a withering look), while 'dithering' means being indecisive or, in graphics, adding noise to smooth gradients.
'Doddering' describes feeble senile unsteadiness, especially of elderly people, whereas 'dithering' denotes hesitation or indecision.