trotter

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See also: Trotter

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English trottere, equivalent to trot +‎ -er.

Pronunciation[edit]

  • (file)
  • Rhymes: -ɒtə(ɹ)

Noun[edit]

trotter (plural trotters)

  1. One who trots.
    • 2013, Stephen Dobyns, Saratoga Bestiary:
      Charlie kept telling himself that Eddie Gillespie was the great runner, while he was just a quick trotter.
    • 2013 October 22, D. Ter Haar, Collected Papers of P.L. Kapitza: Volume 3[1], volume 3, Elsevier, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 174:
      ... empiricism “A lame cripple going along the right road can overtake a trotter if the latter is running along the wrong road. Moreover, the faster the trotter runs, once having lost the path, the further he lags behind the cripple”. []
  2. In harness racing, a horse with a gait in which the front and back legs on opposite sides take a step together alternating with the other set of opposite legs; as opposed to a pacer.
  3. The foot of a pig, sheep, or other quadruped, especially when prepared as meat.
    Hyponym: crubeen
    grange cookbook recipes for trotters
    • 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VI, in Animal Farm [], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC, page 51:
      Finally Napoleon raised his trotter for silence and announced that he had already made all the arrangements.
  4. (slang) A person's foot.
    • 2004, Charley Hester, Kirby Ross, The True Life Wild West Memoir of a Bush-popping Cow Waddy, page 27:
      Then you get up on your trotters, but you have a job to stand; / For the landscape 'round you totters and your collar's full of sand.
  5. (UK, historical) A tailor's assistant who goes around to receive orders.
    • 1830, William Cobbett, Eleven Lectures on the French and Belgian Revolutions, page 8:
      One of these proprietors is a magistrate of Oxfordshire, another a justice of the peace for Berkshire, and Stewart, who was a tailor's trotter, originally, was lately high sherriff [sic] of his county.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Inherited from Middle French trotter, from Old French trotter, troter (to go, trot), borrowed from Medieval Latin *trottāre, *trotāre (to go), from Frankish *trottōn (to go, run), from Proto-Germanic *trudōną, *trudaną, *tradjaną (to go, step, tread), from Proto-Indo-European *dreh₂- (to run, escape). Cognates with English trot. More at tread.

Pronunciation[edit]

Verb[edit]

trotter

  1. (usually of a horse) to trot

Conjugation[edit]

Derived terms[edit]

Further reading[edit]