Dictionary

trotter en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

From Middle English trottere, equivalent to trot + -er.

Meanings

1. One who trots.
   • Charlie kept telling himself that Eddie Gillespie was the great runner, while he was just a quick trotter. 2013, Stephen Dobyns, Saratoga Bestiary:
   • ... empiricism “A lame cripple going along the right road can overtake a trotter if the latter is running along the wrong road. Moreover, the faster the trotter runs, once having lost the path, the further he lags behind the cripple”.[…] 2013 October 22, D. Ter Haar, Collected Papers of P.L. Kapitza: Volume 3, volume 3, Elsevier, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 174:
2. In harness racing, a horse with a gait in which the front and back legs on opposite sides take a step together alternating with the other set of opposite legs; as opposed to a pacer.
   • The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house. 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 58:
3. The foot of a pig, sheep, or other quadruped, especially when prepared as meat.
   • grange cookbook recipes for trotters
   • In Persia, newly married couples were presented with sheep's trotters steeped in vinegar as a love enticement. 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 220:
   • Finally Napoleon raised his trotter for silence and announced that he had already made all the arrangements. 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VI, in Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC, page 51:
4. (slang) A person's foot.
   • Then you get up on your trotters, but you have a job to stand; / For the landscape 'round you totters and your collar's full of sand. 2004, Charley Hester, Kirby Ross, The True Life Wild West Memoir of a Bush-popping Cow Waddy, page 27:
5. (UK, historical) A tailor's assistant who goes around to receive orders.
   • One of these proprietors is a magistrate of Oxfordshire, another a justice of the peace for Berkshire, and Stewart, who was a tailor's trotter, originally, was lately high sherriff ^([sic]) of his county. 1830, William Cobbett, Eleven Lectures on the French and Belgian Revolutions, page 8:

Forms

Deriveds

trotter-man · trotter case · term-trotter · globetrotter · pig's trotter · bogtrotter

Translations (17)

ota پاچه (the foot of a sheep) · hy տոտիկ (the foot of a pig) · hy փաչա (the foot of a sheep) · hy տոտիկ (the foot of a sheep) · sv travare (a horse trained for harness racing) · pt chispe (the foot of a pig) · ota پاچه (the foot of a pig) · rsk бегач (a horse trained for harness racing) · es trotón (a horse trained for harness racing) · sh čaponjak (the foot of a pig) · mi hōiho toitoi (a horse trained for harness racing) · tr paça (the foot of a sheep) · hu csülök (the foot of a pig) · eo porkpiedo (the foot of a pig) · cs klusák (a horse trained for harness racing) · sv travhäst (a horse trained for harness racing) · fi ravuri (a horse trained for harness racing)