totter

present singular third person totters · participle present tottering · participle past tottered · past tottered

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

   The car tottered on the edge of the cliff.

   3 more examples

   The baby tottered from the table to the chair.

   The old man tottered out of the pub into the street.

   Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated.

   2014 April 21, “Subtle effects”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8884

   Synonyms: reel, teeter, toddle, stagger, sway

2. figurativelyintransitiveTo 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.

   1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], page 11

   1 more example

   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, [...].

   1941 December, Kenneth Brown, “The Newmarket & Chesterford Railway—II”, in Railway Magazine, page 533

   Synonyms: topple

3. archaicintransitiveTo collect junk or scrap.

plural totters

1. intransitiveAn unsteady movement or gait.
2. archaicintransitiveA rag and bone man.

plural Totters

1. A surname from German.