halting

halting adjective: prone to pauses or breaks; hesitant; broken. Also the present participle and gerund of halt.

Adjective

halting (comparative more halting, superlative most halting)

Prone to pauses or breaks; hesitant; broken.
- his halting speech
- her halting steps

halting (plural haltings)

The action of one who halts; a stopping or hesitancy.
- But alas ! alas ! the faintings, the haltings, the back-slidings of Christians, are enough to make us tremble while we rejoice in the hope set before us.1841, George Mogridge, Thoughts for the thoughtful, by old Humphrey, page 167
Synonyms:

hiatus, moratorium, recess

halting is also the present participle and gerund of halt.

Him we enlisted at Para, on the recommendation of the steamship company, on whose vessels he had learned to speak a halting English.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
Her husband spoke to the Indian in halting Sioux, but Horse Ears was wise.1950, Dorothy M. Johnson, Flame on the Frontier; in Indian Country, London: Corgi, 1961, page 28:

What does halting mean?: Halting means prone to pauses or breaks; hesitant; broken.
How do you use halting in a sentence?: Him we enlisted at Para, on the recommendation of the steamship company, on whose vessels he had learned to speak a halting English.
What part of speech is halting?: Halting can be an adjective or a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: halting (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “halting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/halting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.