Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To move or sway unsteadily or unsurely; totter.
- intransitive verb To alternate, as between opposing attitudes or positions; vacillate.
- intransitive verb To be close to or in danger of failure or ruin.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Hence To move about foolishly and aimlessly.
- To see-saw; move up and down in see-saw fashion.
- noun A see-saw.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- verb United States To move up and down on the ends of a balanced plank, or the like, as children do for sport; to seesaw; to titter; to titter-totter.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To tilt back and forth on an edge.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb move unsteadily, with a rocking motion
- noun a plaything consisting of a board balanced on a fulcrum; the board is ridden up and down by children at either end
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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More simply put is what I call the teeter-totter principle.
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So, we're a pleasure to have them going around the country and performing their cultural dance and in the circus they do a performance called the teeter-board, which is like a sliding board, or what we say, a see-saw act.
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` ` The score was kind of teeter-tottering back and forth, but when we needed the big defensive plays, we got them. ''
USATODAY.com 2008
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And just to see everyone's reactions from early this afternoon when everyone had an emotion where they didn't - they were kind of teeter tottering.
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Can a small boy "teeter" on a board against a big boy?
Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study Ontario. Ministry of Education
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Sometimes they walked out on the end of a wide-spreading branch, holding to the one above, and when they began to "teeter" too much they gave a spring and came down on the soft ground.
A Little Girl in Old New York Amanda Minnie Douglas 1873
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Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teeter" along its stony shores all summer.
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Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teeter" along its stony shores all summer.
Walden Henry David Thoreau 1839
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They were shown in a make shift stage early dinner on the "teeter" nights so that we could go to enjoy it.
Kottu kottu 2010
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We're on a kind of teeter totter and there is no way of knowing what the future will bring.
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