Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To walk or move unsteadily or unsurely; totter.
- v. To alternate, as between opposing attitudes or positions; vacillate.
- v. To seesaw.
- v. To cause to teeter or seesaw.
- n. Northeastern U.S. See seesaw. See Regional Note at teeter-totter.
- n. Northeastern U.S. A teetering motion.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Hence To move about foolishly and aimlessly.
- To see-saw; move up and down in see-saw fashion.
- n. A see-saw.
Wiktionary
- v. To tilt back and forth on an edge.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. 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.
WordNet 3.0
- v. move unsteadily, with a rocking motion
- n. a plaything consisting of a board balanced on a fulcrum; the board is ridden up and down by children at either end
Etymologies
- Middle English titeren, probably from Old Norse titra, to shake. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“More simply put is what I call the teeter-totter principle.”
“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.”
“` ` The score was kind of teeter-tottering back and forth, but when we needed the big defensive plays, we got them. '”
“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.”
“Can a small boy "teeter" on a board against a big boy?”
“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.”
“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.”
“They were shown in a make shift stage early dinner on the "teeter" nights so that we could go to enjoy it.”
“We're on a kind of teeter totter and there is no way of knowing what the future will bring.”
“Think about what that does to ... oil-producing [nations] and their ability to set oil prices, and have us go through the kind of teeter-totter that we just went through in the last six months," Schmidt said.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘teeter’.
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sdamle1
echt
echt, apocalypse, resurgence, forthright, logorrhea, mercurial, torrid, exorcise, obscure, intrusive, morose, vindictive and 100 more...
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henryar's list
marmoleum, menagerie, cyan, ochre, pilfer, discombobulate, loquacious, iridescent, amethyst, derelict, botulism, equilibrium and 240 more...
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6-letter words with precisely 1,2, & ...
allele, anatta, arrear, bedded, bettee, cocoon, doodad, gaggee, googol, hubbub, hammam, hummum and 30 more...
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Words from books I've read
These are some words I didn't know when I read and now I want to know!
Scribble, Newfangled, swift, swathe, budget, obstreperous, trickle, rank, covetous, scratch, hunch, dodge and 179 more...
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Words
teeter, headlong, reprobate, canard, ersatz, prevaricate, trenchant, minatory, fatuous, stultify, vitiate, fulminate and 135 more...
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Words For Novel (Part 3)
fibers, gypsy, polymer, schism, syphilitic garden..., holocaust, scrutinant, contemplate, aftermath, consequence, deadlock, impasse and 153 more...
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strangelyrouge's Words
glockenspiel, gewgaw, jetsam, flotsam, gripe, grab, wench, whilst, betwixt, hither, thither, yonder and 1034 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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List of words to expand my vocabulary
does what it says on the tin, and is severely needed.
indolent, insolent, idly, divulge, tattle, benign, roguish, daintily, idle, dowdy, sordid, wanton and 242 more...
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NakedFringe's Words
masticate, chamber, orchid, mandolin, yellow, pomegranate, conundrum, paradox, gyrate, calamitous, opalescent, cacophony and 533 more...
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Tuesday words
just the next words that come along
nasality, transignification, lapsarian, disciple, slanguage, atwitter, avast, ahoy, asleep, awake, hymnody, glissade and 573 more...
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, T
torquate, thalassocracy, toothsome, travois, tempestuous, tone, tincture, tripwire, tether, trill, tenacious, travesty and 355 more...
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Papageno's Words, Pt. I
hobbledehoy, absquatulate, chthonic, prolix, ululate, internecine, verisimilitude, animadversion, concupiscence, vertiginous, cucullate, lucubrate and 1554 more...
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the name of the rose
pleasing words I encounter whilst reading umberto eco's novel of the same name.
matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, nones, vespers, compline, usurper, simoniac, heresiarch, malefactor and 230 more...
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5-1
Hecko, words! Thanks for staying with me. :-)
avenue, viscous, zeroth, usher, scarcely, viability, snout, sole, purify, riotous, menace, moist and 364 more...
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