Other forms: faltered, faltering, falters
To falter is to lose your footing for a second — in a step, in a voice, or in something that had been going well. The runner falters on the last bend, the speaker falters halfway through a name, the engine falters at the lights and then picks up.
A faltering thing has not stopped, and that is where falter and fail part company. Talks falter, an economy falters, support for a plan falters. It takes no object, so things falter by themselves and you cannot falter something. Its commonest shape in real writing is the negative one — her voice never faltered, he did not falter for a moment — which is a compliment about nerve. Faltering works as an adjective in front of a noun as well: faltering steps, a faltering voice, a faltering recovery. You will meet this word in writing far more than in speech.
1verbfalterTo lose strength or steadiness for a moment and nearly stop.~68%
“The engine faltered, then picked up again.”
synonyms: waver, weaken
2verbbreakTo break off or go unsteady while speaking.~10%
“His voice faltered when he read out her name.”
3verbhesitateTo lose confidence and hesitate.~20%
“She never faltered, even when the room turned round.”
synonyms: hesitate, waver
4verbmoveTo move unsteadily on your feet.~2%
“He faltered on the top step and grabbed the rail.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 57 sentences found in the wild and placed 29 of them on a sense (28 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: waver, hesitate
FALT-er → a FAULT
You are running on a flat track when a crack opens across it — a fault in the ground, wide enough to swallow a shoe. Your foot catches the edge, your knees go soft, and the next three steps come out short and uneven.
hooks ontofault
Nobody is certain where falter came from. Its oldest English record already carried the whole range at once — to stagger, to tremble, to stammer, and to get caught up in something. The likeliest source is an Old Norse verb meaning to hesitate, to be puzzled, to be encumbered: not weakness so much as being snagged on something.
Middle English
falteren — to stagger; be unsteady, tremble, quiver; to stammer; be entangled, get caught
English, today
falter
From Middle English falteren (“to stagger; be unsteady, tremble, quiver; to stammer; be entangled, get caught”), further origin unknown. Probably from a gmq source such as Old Norse faltrask (“to hesitate, be puzzled, be encumbered”). May also be a frequentative of fold, although the change from d to t is unusual.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA