Meaning

verb move without being stable, as if threatening to fall

verb walk unsteadily

verb move unsteadily, with a rocking motion

originFrom Middle English totren, toteren, from earlier *tolteren (compare dialectal English tolter (“to struggle, flounder”); Scots tolter (“unstable, wonky”)), from Old English tealtrian (“to totter, vacillate”), from Proto-Germanic *taltrōną, a frequentative form of Proto-Germanic *taltōną (“to sway, dangle, hesitate”), from Proto-Indo-European *del-, *dul- (“to shake, hesitate”). Cognate with Dutch…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0