waver
UK /ˈweɪvə/ · US /ˈweɪvəɹ/ verb, noun, proper noun
Forms wavers wavering wavered waverest waveredst wavereth
- verb To swing or wave, especially in the air, wind, etc.; to flutter. “Flowers wavered in the breeze.”
- verb (dated) To move without purpose or a specified destination; to roam, to wander.
- verb (archaic) To sway back and forth, as if about to fall; to reel, to stagger, to totter.
- verb To begin to weaken or show signs of weakening in resolve; to falter, to flinch, to give way. “Despite all the terrible things that happened to her, she never wavered from her beliefs.”
- verb To feel or show doubt or indecision; to be indecisive between choices; to vacillate.
- verb Of a body part such as an eye or hand, or the voice: to become unsteady; to shake, to tremble. “His voice wavered when the reporter brought up the controversial topic.”
- verb Of light, shadow, or a partly obscured thing: to flicker, to glimmer, to quiver.
- verb Chiefly of a quality or thing: to change, to fluctuate, to vary.
- noun An act of moving back and forth, swinging, or waving; a flutter, a tremble.
- noun A state of beginning to weaken or showing signs of weakening in resolve; a falter.
- noun A state of feeling or showing doubt or indecision; a vacillation.
- noun One who waves their arms, or causes something to swing or wave. “I felt encouraged by all the enthusiastic wavers in the crowd.”
- noun A person who specializes in treating hair to make it wavy.
- noun A tool used to make hair wavy.
- noun (printing, historical) In full waver roller: a roller which places ink on the inking table of a printing press with a back and forth, waving motion.
- noun (obsolete) Synonym of waverer (“one who feels or shows doubt or indecision; a vacillator”).
- noun (obsolete except UK, dialectal, dated) A sapling or other young tree left standing when other trees around it have been felled.
- proper noun A river in northern Cumbria, England, which flows into the Solway Firth.
Synonyms
blink sway waverer hesitation falter faltering flutter flicker hesitate waffle fluctuate vacillate flitter quiver weave quaver
Etymology
The verb is derived from Middle English waveren (“to move back and forth, swing; to move unsteadily, totter; to shake, tremble; to wander; (figurative) to be changeable or unstable; to deviate”), and then possibly:
* from Old English (compare Old English wǣfre (“flickering, quivering, wavering; active, nimble (?)”)), related to Old English wafian (“to wave”) from Proto-West Germanic *wabbjan (“to cause to weave; to entangle; to wrap”), from Proto-Germanic *wabjaną (“to cause to weave; to entangle; to wrap”); and/or
* from Old Norse vafra (“to move unsteadily, flicker”), probably related to vefa (“to weave”);
both from Proto-Germanic *webaną (“to weave”), from Proto-Indo-European *webʰ- (“to braid, weave”). Doublet of wave.
The noun is derived from the verb.
From wave (verb) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns).
Origin uncertain, possibly from waive (“(obsolete) to disregard, overlook”). According to the Oxford English Dictionary the early forms waiver, wayver, weaver indicate that the word is probably not derived from wave (verb).
Webster’s 1913
- verb To play or move to and fro; to move one way and the other; hence, to totter; to reel; to swing; to flutter.
- verb To be unsettled in opinion; to vacillate; to be undetermined; to fluctuate; as, to water in judgment.
- noun A sapling left standing in a fallen wood. [Prov. Eng.]
Etymology [OE. waveren, from AS. wæfre wavering, restless. See Wave, v. i.]
Etymology [From Wave, or Waver, v.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “waver”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details