as in shaking
marked by or given to small uncontrollable bodily movements
after the accident, she was only able to take a few tottering steps at a time
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
1
as in staggering
to move forward while swaying from side to side
tottered around the house as she practiced walking in high heels
Synonyms & Similar Words
2
as in faltering
to swing unsteadily back and forth or from side to side
the figurine tottered precariously for a moment before falling off the shelf
Synonyms & Similar Words
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of tottering
Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 10 Sep. 2025
Adjective
Neither of them understands the other’s dynamic with Daniel, and the split-episode format keeps our sympathies teeter-tottering between each woman.
—Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 10 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tottering
Verb
-
The young men in Bruins blue and gold staggering off the field afterwards dazed, confused.—
Mirjam Swanson,
Oc Register,
13 Sep. 2025
-
Roughly two-thirds of the state’s billionaires made their fortunes in finance and investments, including richest resident (former NYC mayor) Michael Bloomberg, who’s worth staggering $109 billion.—
Ella Malmgren,
Forbes.com,
11 Sep. 2025
Verb
-
The Lions moved to 2-1, while the Ravens are now 1-2 after faltering late in this game.—
Scott Thompson,
FOXNews.com,
23 Sep. 2025
-
China's housing downturn has stretched into a fourth year, with prices, sales, investment and construction activity faltering across the board.—
Anniek Bao,Lee Ying Shan,
CNBC,
25 Aug. 2025
Verb
-
The administration’s lurching one way and another with tariffs is another example.—
Erik Sherman,
Forbes.com,
20 Sep. 2025
-
The title track opens the affair by lurching and creeping forward for ten minutes with odd, off-putting lyrics.—
Jed Gottlieb,
Boston Herald,
13 Sep. 2025
Verb
-
Only a few dozen have been directly imaged; the vast majority have been detected indirectly, primarily through the transit method (when a planet moves across a star and slightly dims its light) or radial velocity measurements (stars wobbling slightly because a planet is in orbit).—
Jamie Carter,
Forbes.com,
19 Sep. 2025
-
Jurors saw some wobbling footage that appeared to be taken from inside a bush, though prosecutors did not explicitly make clear if the footage was taken from Routh's perch.—
Peter Charalambous,
ABC News,
12 Sep. 2025
Verb
-
The Cleveland Guardians, winners of 10 straight games and technically tied with Houston for the third AL wild-card spot, also own the tiebreaker over an Astros team teetering toward collapse.—
Chandler Rome,
New York Times,
21 Sep. 2025
-
Sweet Martha’s cookies are baked to order, then served warm in precariously tall stacks, teetering out of a paper cup, or, better yet, the stand’s signature plastic bucket, which gets loaded with about four dozen cookies despite fitting only three dozen.—
Hannah Goldfield,
New Yorker,
8 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
That week’s host, Emily Blunt, did the trembly voice-over.—
Michael Schulman,
The New Yorker,
21 Dec. 2020
Verb
-
Anderson is a rare and rangy breed of cinematic maximalist—a satirical quasi-historian and pop-cultural magpie with a gift for weaving disparate influences into a marvellously unruly synthesis.—
Justin Chang,
New Yorker,
26 Sep. 2025
-
Of course, for most visitors, the very act of lining up, sweating, and weaving through stalls is part of the magic of visiting Taiwan.—
Clarissa Wei,
Travel + Leisure,
26 Sep. 2025
Verb
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Not even a month had passed since his big sister, Toraya, was shot and killed at an apartment complex in New Jersey, devastating the Reid family and shaking the Timberwolves organization to its core.—
Jon Krawczynski,
New York Times,
30 Sep. 2025
-
In sixteenth-century Europe, just as Martin Luther’s ideas were shaking Catholic institutions, a far more radical movement for freedom rose up among peasants.—
The Editors,
JSTOR Daily,
30 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Tottering.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tottering. Accessed 2 Oct. 2025.
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