stotter

Definitions

To stumble.
To affect with staggers.
noun In golf, a ball that stots or bounces: generally used in some such expression as ‘a good stotter,’ meaning a ball that possesses resiliency and bounces well upon being dropped on a hard, flat surface.

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word stotter.

The muckle black deil was father to the Frasers, a'body kens that; and as for the Gregara, I never could abye the reek of them since I could stotter on two feet.

David Balfour, a sequel to Kidnapped. 1893
Gregara, I never could abye the reek of them since I could stotter on two feet.

David Balfour, Second Part Being Memoirs Of His Adventures At Home And Abroad, The Second Part: In Which Are Set Forth His Misfortunes Anent The Appin Murder; His Troubles With Lord Advocate Grant; Captivity On The Bass Rock; Journey Into Holland And France; And Singular Relations With James More Drummond Or Macgregor, A Son Of The Notorious Rob Roy, And His Daughter Catriona Robert Louis Stevenson 1872
Frasers, a'body kens that; and as for the Gregara, I never could abye the reek of them since I could stotter on two feet.

Catriona Robert Louis Stevenson 1872
At the same time, to clear his way, and the better to enable him to take a good mark, he gave James Batter a shove, that made him stotter against the wall, and snacked the good new farthing tobacco-pipe, that James was taking his first whiff out of; crying, at the same blessed moment -- "Hold out o 'my road, ye long withered wabster.

The Life of Mansie Wauch tailor in Dalkeith David Macbeth Moir 1824