dodder

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈdɒdə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈdɑdɚ/

• Rhymes: -ɒdə(ɹ)

From Middle English daderen (“to quake, tremble”). Compare Norwegian dudra (“to tremble”).

dodder (third-person singular simple present dodders, present participle doddering, simple past and past participle doddered)

1. (intransitive) To shake or tremble as one moves, especially as of old age or childhood; to totter.
   • 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Eternal City”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 432:

     Yossarian responded to the thought by slipping away stealthily from the police and almost tripped over the feet of a burly woman of forty hastening across the intersection guiltily, darting furtive, vindictive glances behind her toward a woman of eighty with thick, bandaged ankles doddering after her in a losing pursuit.

   • 2013, J. M. Coetzee, The Childhood of Jesus, Melbourne, Australia: The Text Publishing Company, pages 59–60:

     Their neighbours have been, on one side, an old man who dodders around in his dressing gown talking to himself, and on the other a stand-offish couple who pretend not to understand the Spanish he speaks.

• dodderer
• doddering (adjective)
• doddery

From Middle English doder (“flax dodder”), from Middle Dutch doder, from Old Dutch *doder, ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *dodr (viz. theories of origin). Cognate with Middle Low German doder, West Flemish dodder.

dodder (countable and uncountable, plural dodders)

1. Any of about 100-170 species of yellow, orange or red (rarely green) parasitic plants of the genus Cuscuta. Formerly treated as the only genus in the family Cuscutaceae, it is now placed in the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae.

• angel hair, devil's guts, devil's hair, devil's ringlet, goldthread, hailweed, hairweed, hellbine, love vine, pull-down, strangleweed, witch's hair

• rodded