Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Trembling or vacillating as if about to fall; unsteady; shaky.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Trembling or vaccilating, as if about to fall; unsteady; shaking.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Tending to
totter .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective unsteady in gait as from infirmity or old age
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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"'Poor lamb, poor little lamb,' says Aunt Abby, standin 'over her, all kind of tottery, and tryin' to bathe her head with camphor.
The Wind in the rose-bush and other stories of the supernatural Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman 1891
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But before ten days were gone even the woman Ipsukuk exhausted her provisions, and went home weak and tottery.
A HYPERBOREAN BREW 2010
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I found him first, a little withered, dried-up old fellow, wrinkled-faced and bleary-eyed and tottery.
CHAPTER XII 2010
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Though souls may rush together, if body cannot endure body, happiness is reared on sand and the structure will be ever unstable and tottery.
CHAPTER 8 2010
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Levine, 67, who has been plagued with health woes for the last few years and looked physically tottery at the curtain call, has resumed active duty this fall both at the Met and at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he is music director.
Going for the Rheingold Anne Midgette 2010
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Men who had witnessed his advent, noted that he was weak and tottery, and that he staggered over to a heap of cabin-logs and sat down.
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At a market, tottery old men and women were searching in the garbage thrown in the mud for rotten potatoes, beans, and vegetables, while little children clustered like flies around a festering mass of fruit, thrusting their arms to the shoulders into the liquid corruption, and drawing forth morsels but partially decayed, which they devoured on the spot.
THE DESCENT 2010
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But before ten days were gone, even the woman Ipsukuk exhausted her provisions, and went home weak and tottery.
A HYPERBOREAN BREW 2010
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His walk was actually tottery as he came down the port side of the cabin.
Chapter 36 2010
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Levine, 67, who has been plagued with health woes for the last few years and looked physically tottery at the curtain call, has resumed active duty this fall both at the Met and at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he is music director.
The Met's 'Das Rheingold': Cast for the simulcast? Anne Midgette 2010
qroqqa commented on the word tottery
She scorned the support of a cane; canes were for men, who were often feeble and tottery as early as their sixties.
—James Thurber, 1952, 'Daguerreotype of a Lady', in The Thurber Album
July 10, 2008