Etymology

stagger

stag·ger
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Today it means: An unsteady movement of the body in walking or standing as if one were about to fall; a reeling motion. Full definition →

Middle English stageren ← Old Norse stakra
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stagger · noun, verb1

  1. Old Norse · derived fromstaka“to push, knock, bump into, stumble”
  2. Old Norse · derived fromstakra“to stagger, sway, waver, swing, wobble”
  3. Middle English · inherited fromstageren
  4. English todaystagger

From Middle English stageren, a variant of stakeren ("to walk unsteadily, stagger"; whence modern dialectal English stacker (“to totter, reel, stagger”)), from Old Norse stakra (“to stagger, sway, waver, swing, wobble”), frequentative of Old Norse staka (“to push, knock, bump into, stumble”). Cognate with Danish stagre (“to stagger”), West Flemish staggeren (“to stagger”), Dutch staggelen (“to stagger”), German staggeln (“to stammer, stagger”).

stagger · noun2

From stag + -er.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.