Adjacent Words

Tottering definitions

	Tweet

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

TOT'TERING, ppr. Shaking, as threatening a fall; vacillating; reeling; inclining.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: unsteady in gait as from infirmity or old age; "a tottering skeleton of a horse"; "a tottery old man" [syn: tottering, tottery]
2: (of structures or institutions) having lost stability; failing or on the point of collapse; "a tottering empire"

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1534 1. a. being in an unstable condition <a tottering building> b. walking unsteadily 2. lacking firmness or stability ; insecure <a tottering regime> • totteringly adverb

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Totter Tot"ter, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Tottered; p. pr. & vb. n. Tottering.] [Probably for older tolter; cf. AS. tealtrian to totter, vacillate. Cf.Tilt to incline, Toddle, Tottle, Totty.] 1. To shake so as to threaten a fall; to vacillate; to be unsteady; to stagger; as,an old man totters with age. ``As a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering fence.'' --Ps. lxii. 3. 2. To shake; to reel; to lean; to waver. Troy nods from high, and totters to her fall. --Dryden.

Moby Thesaurus

Lissajous figure, alternation, ambling, ambulation, anile, back-and-forth, backpacking, cautious, circumspect, claudicant, collapsing, coming and going, crabbed, crawling, creeping, creeping like snail, debilitated, deciduous, declining, declivitous, decrepit, decurrent, deliberate, descendant, descending, dilapidated, doddered, doddering, doddery, down, down-reaching, downcoming, downfalling, downgoing, downhill, downsinking, downward, drooping, dropping, easy, ebb and flow, falling, faltering, feeble, flagging, fluctuation, flux and reflux, foot-dragging, footing, footing it, footwork, fossilized, gentle, gerontal, gerontic, going on foot, gradual, groggy, halting, hiking, hitchhiking, hitching, hobbled, hobbling, hoofing, idle, indolent, infirm, languid, languorous, lazy, legwork, leisurely, limping, lumbering, marching, moderate, mossbacked, moth-eaten, mummylike, on the decline, on the descendant, on the downgrade, on the skids, on the wane, oscillation, palsied, papery-skinned, pedestrianism, pendulation, perambulation, plummeting, plunging, poking, poky, ramshackle, ravaged with age, reciprocation, relaxed, reluctant, rhythmic play, ricketish, rickety, rocky, run to seed, rusty, sagging, sauntering, seesaw, seesawing, senile, setting, shaky, shifting, shriveled, shuffling, sine wave, sinking, slack, slothful, slow, slow as death, slow as molasses, slow as slow, slow-crawling, slow-foot, slow-going, slow-legged, slow-moving, slow-paced, slow-poky, slow-running, slow-sailing, slow-stepped, sluggish, snail-paced, snaillike, spidery, spindly, staggering, stricken in years, strolling, submerging, subsiding, teeter, teeter-totter, teeter-tottering, teetering, teetery, tentative, thumbing, thumbing a ride, timeworn, to-and-fro, toddling, tortoiselike, tottery, tramping, treading, trudging, tumbledown, turtlelike, unhurried, unsteady, ups and downs, vacillation, variation, vicissitude, waddling, walking, wavering, weak, wigwag, withered, wizened, wobbly