totter

verb

1. (intransitive)To walk, move or stand unsteadily or falteringly; threatening to fall.

   “The baby tottered from the table to the chair.”

   “The old man tottered out of the pub into the street.”

   “The car tottered on the edge of the cliff.”

   “Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated.”

2. (figuratively, intransitive)To be on the brink of collapse.

   “[…]the folly of this Iland, they ſay there's but fiue vpon this Iſle ; we are three of them, if th' other two be brain'd like vs, the State totters.”

   “By the latter part of 1848, the throne of Hudson the Railway King who had been called in in 1845 as a superman to save the Eastern Counties Railway, was tottering to its fall, [...].”

3. (archaic, intransitive)To collect junk or scrap.

noun

1. (intransitive)An unsteady movement or gait.
2. (archaic, intransitive)A rag and bone man.

name

1. A surname from German.