What is "tottering"

Usage examples of "tottering".

Ibrahim wrested Syria from the Porte, and the Ottoman empire was tottering to its fall, unless the European states should interfere to prevent it, or Russia should realize her long-cherished schemes of aggrandizement by taking the shores of the Bosphorus, which the Sultan was not able to defend, under her own protection.

And before she had any time to prepare herself for it, there they stood on the embankment, with the Grand Canal opening resplendently before them in gleaming amorphous blues and greens and olives and silvers, and the tottering palace fronts of marble and inlay leaning over to look at their faces in it, and the mooring poles, top-heavy, striped, lantern-headed, bristling outside the doorways in the cobalt-shadowed water, and the sudden bunches of piles propped together like drunks holding one another up outside an English pub after closing time.

In this marsh, too, the children sometimes saw that singular bird, the Avoset, with its curious curved bill, its noisy clamor, and its long legs, bending and tottering under him, as he ran about the marsh or waded into its pools.

Belkram stood up on the palm of the hand as it came, tottering about uncertainly like a man on stilts hopping about in a cesspool and likely at any moment to come to a far closer acquaintance with it.

The information that he imparted was that Killer Durgan, accompanied by Ernie Shires and a few others, intended to appear on a Brooklyn dock where both Hennesy and Larrigan would be, and be the motive of a general uprising that would end the tottering regime of Bart Hennesy.

Julie was of a huge-eyed and dusky-headed five-year-old, tottering in tear-stained from break with a waterlogged earthworm hanging in a swoon from her small, pink hand.

The well-knit kingdom Conan had built up seemed tottering on the edge of dissolution, and commoners and merchants trembled at the imminence of a return of the feudalistic regime.

Then the Bridal Chamber--the animal that invented that idea was still alive and unhanged, at that day--Bridal Chamber whose pretentious flummery was necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellect of that hosannahing citizen.

At last, after minutes that seemed endless, Wang Foo arose from his desk and walked with tottering steps to a corner where Vincent could see a Chinese gong.

At last Bajujh rose tottering, and lifted his hands, less a sign to end the feast, than a token of surrender in the contest of gorging and guzzling, and stumbling, was caught by his warriors who bore him to his hut.

Thus the territories under Russian control would include the Baltic provinces, all of Germany to the occupational line, all Czechoslovakia, a large part of Austria, the whole of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, until Greece in her present tottering condition is reached.

Cyrus Ogg tottering into his skipper, arms clasping her as he fought for balance.

I could but watch in helpless silence the advancing throng, with my poor friends in their midst, their hands bound, their tottering footsteps directed by rude shoves towards the pipul tree, the accustomed assembly place of the villagers and the village council.

Its ungainly gait started out weary and progressed through plodding to staggering until eventually Sharantyr tired of its plaintive snorting and tottering progress and swung herself down from its back.

A little way up Dyot-street, on the right hand from Holborn, we perceived the gateway to which Barney had directed me, and passing under it into a court filled with tottering tenements of the most wretched appearance, we were soon attracted to the spot we sought, by the clamour of voices apparently singing and vociferating together.