trotter

Etymology

From Middle English trottere, equivalent to trot + -er.

noun

1. One who trots.
   Charlie kept telling himself that Eddie Gillespie was the great runner, while he was just a quick trotter. 2013, Stephen Dobyns, Saratoga Bestiary
   ... empiricism “A lame cripple going along the right road can overtake a trotter if the latter is running along the wrong road. Moreover, the faster the trotter runs, once having lost the path, the further he lags behind the cripple”.[…] 2013-10-22, D. Ter Haar, Collected Papers of P.L. Kapitza: Volume 3, volume 3, Elsevier, →OCLC, page 174
2. In harness racing, a horse with a gait in which the front and back legs on opposite sides take a step together alternating with the other set of opposite legs; as opposed to a pacer.
3. The foot of a pig, sheep, or other quadruped, especially when prepared as meat.
   grange cookbook recipes for trotters
4. (slang) A person's foot.
   Then you get up on your trotters, but you have a job to stand; / For the landscape 'round you totters and your collar's full of sand. 2004, Charley Hester, Kirby Ross, The True Life Wild West Memoir of a Bush-popping Cow Waddy, page 27
5. (UK, historical) A tailor's assistant who goes around to receive orders.
   One of these proprietors is a magistrate of Oxfordshire, another a justice of the peace for Berkshire, and Stewart, who was a tailor's trotter, originally, was lately high sherriff of his county. 1830, William Cobbett, Eleven Lectures on the French and Belgian Revolutions, page 8