Word.ws English Dictionary

tottering

tottering is the present participle and gerund of totter.

Adjective

tottering (comparative more tottering, superlative most tottering)

  1. Unsteady, precarious or rickety.
  2. Unstable, insecure or wobbly.

Meaning of totter

Verb

totter (third-person singular simple present totters, present participle tottering, simple past and past participle tottered)

  1. (intransitive) To walk, move or stand unsteadily or falteringly; threatening to fall.
    • The baby tottered from the table to the chair.
    Synonyms:
    reel, teeter, toddle, stagger, sway
  2. (figuratively, intransitive) To 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...
    Synonyms:
    topple
  3. (archaic, intransitive) To collect junk or scrap.

See all 6 meanings of totter

Noun

tottering (plural totterings)

  1. The movement of one who totters.
    • Its faint descent tried the powers of the horse to keep back the car, and so feeble were his totterings that I began to fear we should miss the train[…]1918, George Moore, A Storyteller's Holiday

Synonyms of tottering

Forms of tottering

Adjective
comparativemore tottering
superlativemost tottering
Noun
pluraltotterings

Words formed from tottering

Questions about tottering

What does tottering mean?
Tottering means unsteady, precarious or rickety.
What is tottering the present participle and gerund of?
Tottering is the present participle and gerund of totter.
What part of speech is tottering?
Tottering can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near tottering in the dictionary

  1. totterers
  2. tottergrass
  3. Totteridge
  4. totterier
  5. totteriest
  6. tottering
  7. Totteringham
  8. totteringly
  9. totterings
  10. totterish
  11. Totternhoe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tottering (page history and authors); totter (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: “tottering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tottering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.