What's the difference between titter and totter?

Titter


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To laugh with the tongue striking against the root of the upper teeth; to laugh with restraint, or without much noise; to giggle.
  • (n.) A restrained laugh.
  • (v. i.) To seesaw. See Teeter.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But in and among the general approval, there was the odd titter that such a well-established prize should find itself being backed by a purveyor of sticky drinks.
  • (2) But there’s also generic observational material (how British people avoid speaking to strangers on trains, and so on), and I soon found Hess’s incessant burbling and tittering around largely trivial subjects beginning to wash over me.
  • (3) The audience tittered when Murdoch said he thought the channel's news coverage had no political bias.
  • (4) Well Dave genuinely thought the reptiles would go mad for tantric sex lolz because when he tested it in cabinet people were seriously woof, Govey was so hysterical that Haguey was like, hark at Lady Govina, titter ye not missus & Picklesy kept shouting encore, so Dave said funny you should ask, well they have this position called the BT engineer as in you stay in all day and no one comes.
  • (5) There was a bit of tittering from the audience and it has to be said that in this city of nostalgia and football passion, where Diego Maradona will always be king and everybody is an expert, Benítez retains popular support.
  • (6) The muses holding up the balcony tittered and the huge chandelier, only just out of reach of Dodd's enormous tickling stick, tinkled with delight.
  • (7) Labour's shadow education secretary, and historian, Tristram Hunt retorts that it is Gove's argument, rather than unpatriotic Britons tittering over fictional tortoises, that is really shocking.
  • (8) And there was a certain amount of twitter tittering about two of the world's most eminent economists getting their sums wrong.
  • (9) It’s easier to say we are not guilty, the Russians are guilty … It reminds me of antisemitism: the Jews are guilty of everything,” Putin said at the end of his comments, which drew titters from the audience.
  • (10) Nadine Dorries "the suspended member for Mid Bedfordshire" – titter ye not – has not yet achieved her stated aim of encouraging a discussion about abortion or the nasty Lib Dems while emptying the dunny.
  • (11) There are a few titters from the crowd; the venue comfortably holds about 100, but because of the excitable reviews for Musgraves's new album, Same Trailer Different Park , the room is crammed with perhaps double that.
  • (12) With a competitive league match under their belts, most English teams will have a better of idea where they stand with regard to the season ahead, with Arsenal the subject of much tittering in the wake of their home defeat at the hands of West Ham after All That Talk.
  • (13) Pretentious in the best sense of the word, Bush in the early 80s became one of those artists, such as the Associates or Japan, who caused Radio 1 daytime DJs to titter nervously, or be openly derisive.
  • (14) At this point in our conversation Portman, 26 now but still with the proportions and doll-like features of a child, titters - there's no other word for it - nervously.
  • (15) Significant differences in end point titter were observed both within and between species.
  • (16) So forget Shagga, titter ye not and consider the (serious face) … Geopolitical context Remember that episode of Borgen where they spent an hour that you'll never get back on the power plays over the election of Denmark's next EU commissioner?
  • (17) Let the camp tittering cease while its spiritual significance is finally acknowledged.
  • (18) A real human voice – the conductor, presumably – raises a significant titter in the carriage when reminding us of this, adding “assuming they arrive on time”.
  • (19) "A mountain has been made out of a molehill," said Dave Bassett, oblivious to the tittering around him.
  • (20) Titter in the audience as he speaks of the controversy the award has generated.

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.