totter
An unsteady movement or gaitAn unsteady movement or gait.
Recorded UK: Speaker: Vealhurl Recorder: Vealhurl, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
» Tom and Mary were playing on the teeter-totter.
Том и Мэри качались на качелях. — marafon
CK · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
2 senses(intransitive)An unsteady movement or gait.
Schwanken, Taumeln, Torkeln
(archaic, intransitive)A rag and bone man.
Examples
7 sentencesTom and Mary were playing on the teeter-totter.
ruТом и Мэри качались на качелях. — marafon
An old man came tottering along.
The whole power structure is tottering.
deDas gesamte Machtgefüge wankt. — sacredceltic
We tottered together upon the brink of the fall.
The colt was finally able to stand and followed tottering after its mother.
Translations
4 languagesBy meaning 1
Origin
From Middle English totren, toteren, from earlier *tolteren (compare dialectal English tolFrom Middle English totren, toteren, from earlier *tolteren (compare dialectal English tolter (“to struggle, flounder”); Scots tolter (“unstable, wonky”)), from Old English tealtrian (“to totter, vacillate”), from Proto-Germanic *taltrōną, a frequentative form of Proto-Germanic *taltōną (“to sway, dangle, hesitate”), from Proto-Indo-European *del-, *dul- (“to shake, hesitate”).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.