Word.ws English Dictionary

staggered

staggered is the simple past and past participle of stagger.

Adjective

staggered (comparative more staggered, superlative most staggered)

  1. Astonished; taken aback.
  2. Arranged in a way that is not uniform.
    • The U.S. Senate holds staggered elections, with only one third of the seats being filled every two years.
  3. Not directly opposite each other.
    • Many of the wayside stations have staggered platforms, a common arrangement on the S.E.R.1957 August, H. P. White, “The Tonbridge-Hastings Line and its Traffic”, in Railway Magazine, page 529
    • The line now veers slightly south through a wooded cutting before arriving at the staggered platforms of Stocksmoor station (6½ miles) and a further ¾-mile stretch of level track leads to Shepley & Shelley (7¼ miles).1959 May, Yorkshireman, “The Huddersfield-Penistone line and its branches”, in Trains Illustrated, page 253

Meaning of stagger

Verb

stagger (third-person singular simple present staggers, present participle staggering, simple past and past participle staggered)

  1. (intransitive) In standing or walking, to sway from one side to the other as if about to fall; to stand or walk unsteadily; to reel or totter.
    • She began to stagger across the room.
  2. (transitive) To cause to reel or totter.
    • The powerful blow of his opponent's fist staggered the boxer.
  3. (intransitive) To cease to stand firm; to begin to give way; to fail.
    • 1708, Joseph Addison, The Present State of the War, and the Necessity of an Augmentation
  4. (intransitive) To begin to doubt and waver in purposes; to become less confident or determined; to hesitate.
    • He [Abraham] staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Romans 4:20
  5. (transitive) To cause to doubt and waver; to make to hesitate; to make less steady or confident; to shock.
    • He will stagger the committee when he presents his report.
  6. (transitive) To arrange (a series of parts) on each side of a median line alternately, as the spokes of a wheel or the rivets of a boiler seam.

See all 15 meanings of stagger

Forms of staggered

comparativemore staggered
superlativemost staggered

Words formed from staggered

Words that rhyme with staggered

Questions about staggered

What does staggered mean?
Staggered means astonished; taken aback.
What is staggered the simple past and past participle of?
Staggered is the simple past and past participle of stagger.
What part of speech is staggered?
Staggered is an adjective.

Words near staggered in the dictionary

  1. stagger soup
  2. stagger-through
  3. stagger-throughs
  4. staggerbush
  5. staggerbushes
  6. staggered
  7. staggered shelves
  8. staggeredly
  9. staggerer
  10. staggerers
  11. staggerest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: staggered (page history and authors); stagger (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-staggered.ogg.

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