What's the difference between falter and totter?

Falter


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To thrash in the chaff; also, to cleanse or sift, as barley.
  • (v. & n.) To hesitate; to speak brokenly or weakly; to stammer; as, his tongue falters.
  • (v. & n.) To tremble; to totter; to be unsteady.
  • (v. & n.) To hesitate in purpose or action.
  • (v. & n.) To fail in distinctness or regularity of exercise; -- said of the mind or of thought.
  • (v. t.) To utter with hesitation, or in a broken, trembling, or weak manner.
  • (v. i.) Hesitation; trembling; feebleness; an uncertain or broken sound; as, a slight falter in her voice.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The compromised ice sheet tilts and he sinks into the Arctic Sea on the back of his faltering white Icelandic pony.
  • (2) When you have champions of financial rectitude such as the International Monetary Fund and OECD warning of the international risk of an "explosion of social unrest" and arguing for a new fiscal stimulus if growth continues to falter, it's hardly surprising that tensions in the cabinet over next month's spending review are spilling over.
  • (3) The use of a more 'appropriate' growth curve of exclusively breast-fed, healthy infants instead of the NCHS reference failed to define more accurately the age at which growth faltering starts.
  • (4) Playboy's globally recognisable "bunny ears" image remains untarnished by economic factors, but its business has faltered amid a rise in free adult entertainment online.
  • (5) The main symptom "incoordination" (ataxia, asynergy, paresis, paralysis) is used by us more precisely only in case of impairment of nervous system by neoplastic infiltrations and does not signify as possible symptoms of general physical weakness, for example faltering, staggering, tumbling or lameness.
  • (6) Against the backdrop of a faltering global economy, turmoil in the country’s stock markets and overcapacity in factories, Chinese economic growth has slowed markedly.
  • (7) Kerry flew into the Afghan capital in an attempt to salvage the faltering political and technical agreements that he had brokered between Ghani and his presidential rival, Abdullah Abdullah .
  • (8) Some people believe that it just works but the reality is that the online buyer-seller relationship can falter at any one of a number of hurdles.
  • (9) It is the liberal drive, with its obsessive seeking of a universal position, that ultimately obscures the violence taking place in this faltering dialogue.
  • (10) With China a key driving force behind already faltering global growth, its relations with the new US president will come into sharp focus.
  • (11) The dismal numbers followed a series of factory surveys since the start of 2014 that have pointed to weakness in economic activity as demand has faltered at home and abroad.
  • (12) Yet, “if the expansion was to falter or if inflation was to remain stubbornly low, the [Fed] would be able to provide only a modest degree of additional stimulus by cutting the federal funds rate back to near zero”.
  • (13) The clinical picture of repeated infection causing growth faltering followed by oedema, hair and skin changes, resembled the response to infection of many nutritionally stressed children in the tropical world.
  • (14) The median time for faltering in exclusively fed infants in Jordan was 6 months.
  • (15) When markets falter and banks fail it's the jobs and the homes and the security of the squeezed middle that are hit the hardest.
  • (16) The relationship between the prevalence of nine different categories of diseases and growth was investigated to determine the quantitative contribution of the diseases to the growth faltering observed.
  • (17) Xi has brushed aside concerns about his country’s faltering economy, telling an audience of business leaders in London that it would remain the powerhouse of the global economy.
  • (18) While the patient is undergoing evaluation of pelvic pain, it is essential that clinicians remain aware that the patient's psychogenic symptoms are an attempt to reinforce a faltering ego.
  • (19) Next on his list would be the faltering economy, social justice and reinforcing freedom and democracy.
  • (20) The welfare cap is lined up, as the bedroom tax continues and disability benefits falter.

Totter


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To shake so as to threaten a fall; to vacillate; to be unsteady; to stagger; as,an old man totters with age.
  • (v. i.) To shake; to reel; to lean; to waver.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Most ship-breaking workers are migrants from the north who rent rooms in the warren of makeshift shanties that totter over the water’s edge.
  • (2) The European Union (EU), one of the more promising developments of the post-world war II period, has been tottering because of the harsh effect of the policies of austerity during recession, condemned even by the economists of the International Monetary Fund (if not the IMF’s political actors).
  • (3) In one allele of the tottering locus, a pathogenetic lesion linking noradrenergic hyperinnervation with cortical spike-wave discharges has been identified.
  • (4) The most significant difference from last year's London event is that instead of a tottering and discredited transitional regime, Somalia now has a fully fledged government, led by Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
  • (5) But the damage of a Greek exit will be out of all proportion to its size, as other dominoes totter, damaging confidence and trade even if they don't fall.
  • (6) As she tottered around a crime scene in high heels, I had the strong feeling that Cubitt, now directing the series as well as writing it, had put out of his mind altogether the cries of misogyny that trailed the first series.
  • (7) It means you can totter into the kitchen to put the kettle on 10 times a day.
  • (8) There are few precedents for such an explosive political ascent in modern western Europe; in Spain, a discredited political elite appears to be tottering.
  • (9) Hippocampal CA3 pyramidal neurons in the adult epileptic mutant mouse tottering (tg) show normal intrinsic membrane properties, yet fire abnormally prolonged paroxysmal depolarizing shifts (PDS) during in vitro exposure to elevated extracellular potassium solutions.
  • (10) Immunocytochemical staining for tyrosine hydroxylase demonstrated the pronounced hyperinnervation in the "tottering" brain, whereas both serotonin and choline acetyltransferase immunostaining were similar between "tottering" and wild type.
  • (11) Leading care and health bodies are demanding crisis talks with ministers over the unravelling of measures in George Osborne ’s spending review that were supposed to prop up the tottering social care system.
  • (12) Older versions of 1980s and 1990s politicians – Lord Carrington, John Prescott – tottered in and out of the chamber.
  • (13) It's not easy and, with Tom and I hoisting him up, we worry that he might totter and fall.
  • (14) But in El Salvador the challenge is exacerbated by tottering public institutions, high rates of sexual violence, inadequate sex education and a backdrop of violence and gang warfare which are undermining efforts to control the outbreak.
  • (15) The two bankers are also heard laughing and joking at a time when the bank was tottering on the brink of destruction.
  • (16) No significant difference in Bmax or Kd values was identified between adult tottering and control mice in any of the tissue preparations.
  • (17) The petit-mal seizures of the "tottering" mutant mouse (tg) have been attributed to an exaggerated noradrenergic projection from locus coeruleus to the telencephalon (Noebels 1984).
  • (18) The tottering mouse resulted from a recessively inherited, autosomal, single-locus mutation which produces a very characteristic neurological and cellular phenotype.
  • (19) Occasionally it is alleged that the billet began to totter during the stroke and that the left hand responded to this stimulus by an unwilled movement to the billet.
  • (20) I see an extremely united front.” Unity is all the more necessary ahead of the Dutch elections in March and the French presidential elections , in the spring in which the anti-EU populists Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen threaten upsets that would, together or separately, represent existential threats to the tottering European project.