Stotter
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To stagger; totter; stumble Northern-England, Scotland, dialectal, intransitive
"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."
Example
More examples"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."
Etymology
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”), equivalent to stut + -er (frequentative suffix).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.