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• v  move without being stable, as if threatening to fall
• v  walk unsteadily
• v  move unsteadily, with a rocking motion
• s  unsteady in gait as from infirmity or old age
  a tottering skeleton of a horse
• s  (of structures or institutions) having lost stability; failing or on the point of collapse
  a tottering empire

• It was April 30, 1945, and Berlin, the capital of Adolf Hitler's tottering Third Reich, was a shattered, flaming inferno.
• After years of tottering on the brink of economic crisis, Argentina started sliding into chaos last week.
• When he assumed the presidency in 1982, Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado inherited a country tottering on the edge of economic collapse.

• totter
• toddle
• coggle
• dodder
• paddle
• waddle
• teeter
• seesaw
• tottery

News & Articles

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• Froma Harrop: High heels and workers' rights
  Waitresses showing cleavage does not create a condition demanding surgery. Tottering on heels week after week after month can.
  June 15, 2013 - The Tennessean

Quotes

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• William Galvin in Newsweek
  They kept their clients, and their own advisers to those clients, in the dark, even as they, themselves, got out of that tottering market,Galvin said.
• Daniel Pipes in Prison Planet.com
  Here is an idea for Barack Obama to salvage his tottering administration by taking a step that protects the United States and its allies,Pipes writes. "He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight,...
• Paul McGinley in Reuters Canada
  I was tottering along and then went 2-2 and all of a sudden it's a brilliant day,said McGinley, who holed out with a nine-iron from 155 yards for his eagle.