What is "teetering"

Usage examples of "teetering".

Why was she lying there worrying about herself, when Blake was teetering on the edge of his own abyss?

If it wasn't love yet, it had nevertheless gone beyond mere desire, and she was teetering on the edge of an emotional chasm.

With a joyous gurgle, the baby let go of the chair and hurled herself toward him, every toddling step teetering on the edge of disaster.

The pressure of his mouth verged on pain, but it wasn't quite there, teetering on that exquisite edge between pain and pleasure.

He disliked zero-g, so the crude internal containment field kept up a differential simulating one gravity, but the effect was inconsistent enough to keep Isozaki teetering on the edge of vertigo.

He felt that his future and the balance of power in human space was teetering on a knife's edge.

He sets up each turn perfectly, coming in low for the high-banked curves so that his apogee -- and mine a few seconds later -- will be teetering right at the lip of the icy bank, careering out of the banked turn at just the right speed for the next descending straight, then banging and skipping down the long icy ramp so fast that vision blurs, the pounding comes up through my tailbone and spine so that vision is doubled, trebled, and my head pounds with the pain of it, then blurs again with the spray of ice chips flying, creating halos in the moonlight, bright as the unblinking stars spill and reel above us -- the brilliant stars competing even with the Oracle's glow and the asteroid moons' quick, tumbling light -- and then we are braking low and bouncing hard and riding high again, arresting into a sharp left that takes my breath away, then skidding into a sharper right, then pounding and flying down a straight so steep that the sled and I seem to be screaming into freefall.

For a minute I am looking straight down at the moonlit phosgene clouds -- green as mustard gas in the lying moonlight -- then we are both racketing around a series of spirals, DNA-HELIX switchbacks, our sleds teetering on the edge of each bank so that twice my ice-axe blade bites into nothing but freezing air, but both times we drop back down and emerge -- not exiting the turns so much as being spit out of them, two rifle bullets fired just above the ice -- and then we bank high again, come out accelerating onto a straight, and shoot across eight kilometers of sheer ice wall on the Abruzzi Spur, the right banked wall of the slideway now serving as the floor of our passage, my ice axe spinning chips into vertical space as our speed increases, then increases more, then becomes something more than speed as the cold, thin air slices through my mask and thermal garments and gloves and heated boots to freeze flesh and to tear at muscle.

The sense of height and exposure was all but overwhelming -- the great green basin of the Startree beneath us, the leafy walls rising into the unblinking distance on all sides, the bulk of the ship curving away beneath us, balancing on the slim column of fusion fire like a building teetering on a fragile blue column.

He was at flash point with a woman he should never have touched, but here he was teetering on the brink of burying himself in her.

Ruefully she admitted that he had a definite talent for keeping people that way, teetering on the edge, unsure, a step behind and not very damn likely to catch up.

Too bad just the thought of dealing with Gabe again made her tight, brittle, teetering on the raw edge of fury.

She grabbed a bag of milk, butter, and cheese that was teetering on the edge of falling over and started after him.

Socks grabbed the teetering cardboard tray of drinks out of Tim's hands and headed for the open motel door.

But neither of them had much love for crossing streams on teetering logs or skittish stones.