Staggering

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Stagger \Stag"ger\ (-g[~e]r), v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Staggered}
     (-g[~e]rd); p. pr. & vb. n. {Staggering}.] [OE. stakeren,
     Icel. stakra to push, to stagger, fr. staka to punt, push,
     stagger; cf. OD. staggeren to stagger. Cf. {Stake}, n.]
     1. To move to one side and the other, as if about to fall, in
        standing or walking; not to stand or walk with steadiness;


        to sway; to reel or totter.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Deep was the wound; he staggered with the blow.
                                                    --Dryden.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. To cease to stand firm; to begin to give way; to fail.
        "The enemy staggers." --Addison.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. To begin to doubt and waver in purpose; to become less
        confident or determined; to hesitate.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              He [Abraham] staggered not at the promise of God
              through unbelief.                     --Rom. iv. 20.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  staggering
       adj 1: walking unsteadily; "a stqaggering gait" [syn: {lurching}, {stumbling},
               {weaving}]
       2: so surprisingly impressive as to stun or overwhelm; "such an
          enormous response was astonishing"; "an astounding
          achievement"; "the amount of money required was
          staggering"; "suffered a staggering defeat"; "the figure
          inside the boucle dress was stupefying" [syn: {astonishing},
           {astounding}, {stupefying}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  151 Moby Thesaurus words for "staggering":
     amazing, ambling, ambulation, astonishing, astounding, backpacking,
     breathtaking, broken, capricious, careening, catchy, cautious,
     choppy, circumspect, claudicant, confounding, crawling, creeping,
     creeping like snail, deliberate, desultory, deviative,
     disconnected, discontinuous, easy, eccentric, electrifying,
     erratic, eye-opening, faltering, fitful, flagging, flickering,
     fluctuating, foot-dragging, footing, footing it, footwork, gentle,
     going on foot, gradual, guttering, halting, herky-jerky,
     heteroclite, hiking, hitchhiking, hitching, hobbled, hobbling,
     hoofing, idle, immethodical, inconstant, indolent, intermittent,
     intermitting, irregular, jarring, jerky, jolting, languid,
     languorous, lazy, legwork, leisurely, limping, lumbering, lurching,
     marching, mind-boggling, miraculous, moderate, nonuniform,
     overwhelming, patchy, pedestrianism, perambulation, poking, poky,
     rambling, relaxed, reluctant, rough, sauntering, scrappy, shocking,
     shuffling, slack, slothful, slow, slow as death, slow as molasses,
     slow as slow, slow-crawling, slow-foot, slow-going, slow-legged,
     slow-moving, slow-paced, slow-poky, slow-running, slow-sailing,
     slow-stepped, sluggish, snail-paced, snaillike, snatchy, spasmatic,
     spasmic, spasmodic, spastic, spectacular, sporadic, spotty,
     startling, strange, strolling, stunning, surprising, tentative,
     thumbing, thumbing a ride, toddling, tortoiselike, tottering,
     tramping, treading, trudging, turtlelike, uncertain, unequal,
     uneven, unhurried, unmethodical, unmetrical, unregular,
     unrhythmical, unsettled, unsteady, unsystematic, variable, veering,
     waddling, walking, wandering, wavering, wobbling, wobbly,
     wonderful, wondrous