Other forms: waddling, waddles
To waddle is to walk with short steps, rocking from side to side. A duck crossing a path.
The rocking is the whole word, and it comes from having short legs set wide apart, which is why ducks, geese and penguins are its natural subjects. Applied to a person it is unkind, since it usually means overweight, though it is used gently about toddlers and about anybody in the late stages of pregnancy. As a noun, a waddle is that gait. It is a close relative of wade, from moving through water.
1verbwaddleTo walk with short steps and a rocking motion.
“The ducklings waddled after their mother.”
Proto-Indo-European
*weh₂dʰ-
Middle English
wadelen
English, today
waddle
From Middle English wadelen, frequentative form of waden, equivalent to wade + le. Compare stq, wadalōn, wadelen, wedelen (“to wander; rove”), wedeln. First known use in English in a version of the Song of Roland around the year 1400.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA