Word.ws English Dictionary

stotter

stotter verb: to stagger; totter; stumble.

Verb

stotter (third-person singular simple present stotters, present participle stottering, simple past and past participle stottered)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, dialectal, intransitive) To stagger; totter; stumble
    • When she sang in the kirk, folk have told me that they had a foretaste of the musick of the New Jerusalem, and when she came in by the village of Caulds old men stottered to their doors to look at her.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide

Forms of stotter

third-person singular presentstotters
present participlestottering
past participlestottered
paststottered
alternative formstowter
alternative formstauter
alternative formstawter

Origin of stotter

From Middle English stoteren (compare also participle Middle English staterand (“staggering; tottering; stumbling”)), a frequentative form of Middle English stoten (“to stumble”), related to Dutch stoten (“to push; bump; butt; stumble against”), German stoßen (“to push; butt; knock; bump”), Icelandic stauta (“to struggle through; pound; grind”).

Questions about stotter

What does stotter mean?
Stotter means to stagger; totter; stumble.
What part of speech is stotter?
Stotter is a verb.
What is the past tense of stotter?
The past tense of stotter is stottered.

Words near stotter in the dictionary

  1. Stotler
  2. Stotlers
  3. stots
  4. stott
  5. stotted
  6. stotter
  7. stottered
  8. stottering
  9. stotters
  10. Stottesdon
  11. stottie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stotter (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.

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