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totter

verb
/ˈtɒtə/UK/ˈtɑtɚ/US

Etymology

From 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”). Cognate with Dutch touteren (“to tremble”), Norwegian dialectal totra (“to quiver, shake”), North Frisian talt, tolt (“unstable, shaky”). Related to tilt.

  1. derived from *del-✻
  2. derived from *taltōną✻ — “to sway, dangle, hesitate”
  3. inherited from *taltrōną✻
  4. inherited from tealtrian — “to totter, vacillate”
  5. inherited from totren

Definitions

  1. To walk, move or stand unsteadily or falteringly

    To walk, move or stand unsteadily or falteringly; threatening to fall.

    • The baby tottered from the table to the chair.
    • The old man tottered out of the pub into the street.
    • The car tottered on the edge of the cliff.

  2. To be on the brink of collapse.

    • […]the folly of this Iland, they ſay there's but fiue vpon this Iſle ; we are three of them, if th' other two be brain'd like vs, the State totters.
    • By the latter part of 1848, the throne of Hudson the Railway King who had been called in in 1845 as a superman to save the Eastern Counties Railway, was tottering to its fall, [...].

  3. To collect junk or scrap.

  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. An unsteady movement or gait.

    2. A rag and bone man.

    3. A surname from German.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at totter. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01totter02unsteadily03uncertain04unsure05unstable06constant07steady08tottering

A definitional loop anchored at totter. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

8 hops · closes at totter

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA