totter

Etymology

From Middle English totren, toteren, from earlier *tolteren (compare dialectal English tolter (“to struggle, flounder”); Scots tolter (“unstable, wonky”)), from Old English tealtrian (“to totter, vacillate”), from Proto-Germanic *taltrōną, a frequentative form of Proto-Germanic *taltōną (“to sway, dangle, hesitate”), from Proto-Indo-European *del-, *dul- (“to shake, hesitate”). Cognate with Dutch touteren (“to tremble”), Norwegian dialectal totra (“to quiver, shake”), North Frisian talt, tolt (“unstable, shaky”). Related to tilt.

verb

1. To walk, move or stand unsteadily or falteringly; threatening to fall.
   The baby tottered from the table to the chair.
   The old man tottered out of the pub into the street.
   The car tottered on the edge of the cliff.
   Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated. 2014-04-21, “Subtle effects”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8884
2. (figurative) To be on the brink of collapse.
   By the latter part of 1848, the throne of Hudson the Railway King who had been called in in 1845 as a superman to save the Eastern Counties Railway, was tottering to its fall, …. 1941 December, Kenneth Brown, “The Newmarket & Chesterford Railway—II”, in Railway Magazine, page 533
3. (archaic) To collect junk or scrap.

noun

1. An unsteady movement or gait.
2. (archaic) A rag and bone man.