(v. i. & t.) 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.
Example Sentences:
(1) Video games specialist Game was teetering on the brink of collapse on Friday after a rescue deal put forward by private equity firm OpCapita appeared to have been given the cold shoulder by lenders who are owed more than £100m.
(2) Slowing growth, financial fragility, governments teetering on the brink of insolvency and default, and clear signs of a public backlash against the excesses of the rich and powerful: all have created a sombre backdrop to the invitation-only affair.
(3) But did those people waking up on this day in January 100 years ago actually believe Britain was teetering on the brink of war?
(4) According to the then-city budget director, Peter Goldmark Jr, “Many people believe there is little or no real security or receivables behind these obligations.” Wall Street bankers, who had enabled much of this reckless behavior, now abruptly refused to take up any more of the city’s notes, leaving it teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
(5) But "cliff-edge" households – perhaps as many as 3.6m in England alone – now find themselves teetering precariously on the brink of poverty.
(6) In reality, it is exacerbating Greece's contradictions, while Greece is teetering on the edge of a cliff.
(7) I gaze, bemused and, yes, fascinated, at curious anthropological artefacts such as Bride Wars or He's Just Not That Into You or Confessions of a Shopaholic, in which Kate Hudson or Ginnifer Goodwin or Isla Fisher play characters who might almost belong to a third gender, a bubble-headed one that emits ear-splitting shrieks, teeters constantly on the verge of hysteria and acts as an indiscriminate mouthpiece for the placement of overpriced tat.
(8) "Pakistan continues to teeter on non-governability … Pakistan's education lags behind Bangladesh's.
(9) To care for heart transplant recipients is to walk an endless tightrope, teetering between too little immunosuppression, and consequent rejection episodes, and too much immunosuppression, with its correlated infection and neoplasia risks.
(10) These are not the figures of a man teetering on the edge or an army on the brink of national humiliation.
(11) Mention of his alleged complicity appears to have set off Kasidiaris during the talk show appearance that has highlighted Greece's teetering position on the edge of dysfunction and despair.
(12) On the verge of defeat the yellow and green Fanatics in the crowd, forever teetering on the line between amusing and annoying, urged him “fight, Nicky, fight” and he did just that.
(13) Presence and the relation of the nerve endings with associated structures in the lund of Rattus rattus rufescens (Indian black rat) and Francolinus pondicerianus (grey partridge or safed teeter) has been studied by cholinesterase technique.
(14) After a night of tough bargaining, European leaders have appeared to salvage what had seemed to be a summit teetering toward failure by agreeing early on Friday to funnel money directly to struggling banks, and in the longer term to form a tighter union.
(15) When Raymond Schwab talks about his case, his voice teeters between anger and sadness.
(16) There is a palpable feeling in the country that the ruling junta has run out of ground, teetering on the precipice and threatening to take the country with it.
(17) Photograph: guardian.co.uk Seven months later, despite the economy teetering close to a triple dip recession, the Tories' 2% lead has now stretched to 7% with 29% preferring Cameron and Osborne and just 22% putting their faith in the Labour duo.
(18) IFS inequality chart IFS warns of biggest squeeze on pay for 70 years over Brexit Read more “These troubling forecasts show millions of families across the country are teetering on a precipice, with 400,000 pensioners and over one million more children likely to fall into poverty and suffer the very real and awful consequences that brings if things do not change.
(19) The sector's problems are set to continue in 2012 as shoppers continue to cut back on non-essential spending and the economy teeters on the edge of recession.
(20) Innervation of the pancreas with reference to blood vessels, pancreatic duct, and islets of Langerhans has been studied in Francolinus pondicerianus (grey partridge or safed teeter).
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.