wobbly
unsteady
TRANSLATION
wobbly = wackelig, schwankend, zittrig --- GOOGLE INDEX wobbly: approximately 3,000,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
Corporate Earnings Leave Stocks WOBBLY
(Wall Street Journal article headline)
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Not only is the kayak WOBBLY, but at night it is difficult to balance because you can't see the water and you lose your natural balance because you're unable to see the horizon.
(BBC News)
(Wall Street Journal article headline)
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Not only is the kayak WOBBLY, but at night it is difficult to balance because you can't see the water and you lose your natural balance because you're unable to see the horizon.
(BBC News)
Did you
know?
wobbly
adjective
- unsteady, trembling, shaking
(Collins Dictionary)
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Wobbly stems from the verb "to wobble," meaning to be unsteady or shake from side to side, which in turn eventually derives from the Low German "wabbeln," which was used in a similar sense.
In addition to the literal sense (He looked a little wobbly after leaving the pub), wobbly can also be applied in the figurative sense of being uncertain. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher said to U.S. President George H. Bush, "This is no time to be wobbly George."
The sense of being shaky gave rise to an interesting, but meanwhile somewhat outdated expression "throw a wobbly," which means to become very angry (Model Naomi Campbell threw a wobbly aboard a jet from the chaotic newly-launched British Airways terminal after a row over a missing bag). In this expression, wobbly implies that someone becomes so angry that they shake.
Wobbly and wobble also gave us the term "collywobbles," a sense of fear and anxiety, which is an inventive formation of "colly" (as in cholera, choleric) and wobble. The relation to cholera is interestingly enough found in the colloquial German phrase "einen Koller bekommen," with Koller stemming from an Old High German word "kolero" meaning extreme anger (modern German = Wut).
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SYNONYMS
rickety, rocky, shaky, teetering, unstable, unsteady
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SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Excuse me waiter! Can you please fix this wobbly table?"
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Thanks to Birgit for suggesting today's word!
adjective
- unsteady, trembling, shaking
(Collins Dictionary)
---
Wobbly stems from the verb "to wobble," meaning to be unsteady or shake from side to side, which in turn eventually derives from the Low German "wabbeln," which was used in a similar sense.
In addition to the literal sense (He looked a little wobbly after leaving the pub), wobbly can also be applied in the figurative sense of being uncertain. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher said to U.S. President George H. Bush, "This is no time to be wobbly George."
The sense of being shaky gave rise to an interesting, but meanwhile somewhat outdated expression "throw a wobbly," which means to become very angry (Model Naomi Campbell threw a wobbly aboard a jet from the chaotic newly-launched British Airways terminal after a row over a missing bag). In this expression, wobbly implies that someone becomes so angry that they shake.
Wobbly and wobble also gave us the term "collywobbles," a sense of fear and anxiety, which is an inventive formation of "colly" (as in cholera, choleric) and wobble. The relation to cholera is interestingly enough found in the colloquial German phrase "einen Koller bekommen," with Koller stemming from an Old High German word "kolero" meaning extreme anger (modern German = Wut).
---
SYNONYMS
rickety, rocky, shaky, teetering, unstable, unsteady
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Excuse me waiter! Can you please fix this wobbly table?"
---
Thanks to Birgit for suggesting today's word!
