Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To walk with short steps that tilt the body from side to side.
  • intransitive verb To walk heavily and clumsily with a pronounced sway.
  • noun A swaying gait.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of walking with a swaying or rocking motion from side to side; a clumsy, rocking gait, with short steps; a toddle.
  • To sway or rock from side to side in walking; move with short, quick steps, throwing the body from one side to the other; walk in a tottering or vacillating manner; toddle.
  • Synonyms Waddle, Toddle. Waddling is a kind of ungainly walking produced by the great weight or natural clumsiness of the walker; toddling is the movement of a child in learning to walk.
  • To tread down by wading or waddling through, as high grass.
  • A dialectal form of wattle.
  • noun The wane of the moon.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb rare To trample or tread down, as high grass, by walking through it.
  • intransitive verb To walk with short steps, swaying the body from one side to the other, like a duck or very fat person; to move clumsily and totteringly along; to toddle; to stumble

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A swaying gait.
  • verb intransitive To walk with short steps, tilting the body from side to side.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb walk unsteadily
  • noun walking with short steps and the weight tilting from one foot to the other

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Frequentative of wade.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

First known use in English in a version of the Song of Roland around the year 1400. (Source:OED online)

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Examples

  • They sport strange growths on their neck and faces that even have odd names: the waddle is the loose skin on the neck and the snood is the fleshy protuberance that grows from the forehead and dangles over the beak.

    David Mizejewski: Turkeys Are True Animal Oddities David Mizejewski 2010

  • They sport strange growths on their neck and faces that even have odd names: the waddle is the loose skin on the neck and the snood is the fleshy protuberance that grows from the forehead and dangles over the beak.

    David Mizejewski: Turkeys Are True Animal Oddities David Mizejewski 2010

  • They sport strange growths on their neck and faces that even have odd names: the waddle is the loose skin on the neck and the snood is the fleshy protuberance that grows from the forehead and dangles over the beak.

    David Mizejewski: Turkeys Are True Animal Oddities David Mizejewski 2010

  • They sport strange growths on their neck and faces that even have odd names: the waddle is the loose skin on the neck and the snood is the fleshy protuberance that grows from the forehead and dangles over the beak.

    David Mizejewski: Turkeys Are True Animal Oddities David Mizejewski 2010

  • They sport strange growths on their neck and faces that even have odd names: the waddle is the loose skin on the neck and the snood is the fleshy protuberance that grows from the forehead and dangles over the beak.

    David Mizejewski: Turkeys Are True Animal Oddities David Mizejewski 2010

  • They sport strange growths on their neck and faces that even have odd names: the waddle is the loose skin on the neck and the snood is the fleshy protuberance that grows from the forehead and dangles over the beak.

    David Mizejewski: Turkeys Are True Animal Oddities David Mizejewski 2010

  • They sport strange growths on their neck and faces that even have odd names: the waddle is the loose skin on the neck and the snood is the fleshy protuberance that grows from the forehead and dangles over the beak.

    David Mizejewski: Turkeys Are True Animal Oddities David Mizejewski 2010

  • Small, rotund and bespectacled, walking with what might be described as a waddle, Dominick never looked or felt remotely intimidating.

    Dan Abrams: Remembering Dominick Dunne 2009

  • On the final chorus, everyone knew to let him take over, and take over he did, stretching the final yonder out until his waddle was the color of Jesus 'wound in the stain glass over the choir loft.

    February 2004 2004

  • On the final chorus, everyone knew to let him take over, and take over he did, stretching the final yonder out until his waddle was the color of Jesus 'wound in the stain glass over the choir loft.

    Song on the Brain (2/16) 2004

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