Other forms: toddlers
A toddler is a child at the wobbly stage, roughly one to three years old — old enough to walk, not yet good at it. Arms out for balance, a determined march across the room, then a sudden sit-down landing.
The word comes from the verb toddle, to walk with short unsteady steps, so the walking is the whole point: a baby who cannot stand yet is not a toddler. It sits between baby and child, and shops and clinics use it as a label — toddler bed, toddler group, toddler shoes, toddler tantrums. English speakers use the verb about themselves as a joke, too: I'll toddle off home means I am leaving, slowly and with no urgency. The plural is toddlers, and toddlerhood, if you meet it, means those two or three years.
1nountoddlerA young child who has just learned to walk, roughly between one and three years old.
“The toddler pushed a chair across the kitchen to reach the biscuit tin.”
toddler is a young child.
Toddler is toddle plus -er: one who toddles. To toddle is to walk with short, unsteady steps, so a toddler is literally one who walks badly — named not for an age but for the way they get across a room.
From toddle + -er – literally “one who walks unsteadily”, hence a young child.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA