trotter

See also: Trotter

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒtə(ɹ)

Noun

trotter (plural trotters)

1. One who trots.
   • 2013, Stephen Dobyns, Saratoga Bestiary:

     Charlie kept telling himself that Eddie Gillespie was the great runner, while he was just a quick trotter.

   • 2013 October 22, D. Ter Haar, Collected Papers of P.L. Kapitza: Volume 3‎^[1], volume 3, Elsevier, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 174:

     ... 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”. […]

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.
   • 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:

     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.

3. The foot of a pig, sheep, or other quadruped, especially when prepared as meat.

   Hyponym: crubeen

   grange cookbook recipes for trotters

   • 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:

     Finally Napoleon raised his trotter for silence and announced that he had already made all the arrangements.

4. (slang) A person's foot.
   • 2004, Charley Hester, Kirby Ross, The True Life Wild West Memoir of a Bush-popping Cow Waddy, page 27:

     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.

5. (UK, historical) A tailor's assistant who goes around to receive orders.
   • 1830, William Cobbett, Eleven Lectures on the French and Belgian Revolutions, page 8:

     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.

Derived terms

• globetrotter
• pig's trotter
• term-trotter
• trotter case
• trotter-man

 

Translations

a horse trained for harness racing

• Finnish: ravuri (fi)
• Maori: hōiho toitoi
• Swedish: travhäst (sv) c, travare (sv) c

the foot of a pig

• Armenian: տոտիկ (hy) (totik)
• Esperanto: porkpiedo
• Hungarian: csülök (hu)
• Portuguese: chispe (pt)

the foot of a sheep

• Armenian: տոտիկ (hy) (totik), փաչա (hy) (pʻačʻa) (dialectal)

French

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French trotter, from Old French trotter, troter (“to go, trot”), borrowed from Medieval Latin *trottāre, *trotāre (“to go”), from Frankish *trottōn (“to go, run”), from Proto-Germanic *trudōną, *trudaną, *tradjaną (“to go, step, tread”), from Proto-Indo-European *dreh₂- (“to run, escape”). Cognates with English trot. More at tread.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tʁɔ.te/

• Audio:

  (file)

Verb

trotter

1. (usually of a horse) to trot

Conjugation

Conjugation of trotter (see also Appendix:French verbs)

infinitive	simple	trotter
	compound	avoir + past participle
present participle or gerund1	simple	trottant /tʁɔ.tɑ̃/
	compound	ayant + past participle
past participle		trotté /tʁɔ.te/
		singular			plural
		first	second	third	first	second	third
indicative		je (j’)	tu	il, elle, on	nous	vous	ils, elles
(simple tenses)	present	trotte /tʁɔt/	trottes /tʁɔt/	trotte /tʁɔt/	trottons /tʁɔ.tɔ̃/	trottez /tʁɔ.te/	trottent /tʁɔt/
	imperfect	trottais /tʁɔ.tɛ/	trottais /tʁɔ.tɛ/	trottait /tʁɔ.tɛ/	trottions /tʁɔ.tjɔ̃/	trottiez /tʁɔ.tje/	trottaient /tʁɔ.tɛ/
	past historic2	trottai /tʁɔ.te/	trottas /tʁɔ.ta/	trotta /tʁɔ.ta/	trottâmes /tʁɔ.tam/	trottâtes /tʁɔ.tat/	trottèrent /tʁɔ.tɛʁ/
	future	trotterai /tʁɔ.tʁe/	trotteras /tʁɔ.tʁa/	trottera /tʁɔ.tʁa/	trotterons /tʁɔ.tʁɔ̃/	trotterez /tʁɔ.tʁe/	trotteront /tʁɔ.tʁɔ̃/
	conditional	trotterais /tʁɔ.tʁɛ/	trotterais /tʁɔ.tʁɛ/	trotterait /tʁɔ.tʁɛ/	trotterions /tʁɔ.tə.ʁjɔ̃/	trotteriez /tʁɔ.tə.ʁje/	trotteraient /tʁɔ.tʁɛ/
(compound tenses)	present perfect	present indicative of avoir + past participle
	pluperfect	imperfect indicative of avoir + past participle
	past anterior2	past historic of avoir + past participle
	future perfect	future of avoir + past participle
	conditional perfect	conditional of avoir + past participle
subjunctive		que je (j’)	que tu	qu’il, qu’elle	que nous	que vous	qu’ils, qu’elles
(simple tenses)	present	trotte /tʁɔt/	trottes /tʁɔt/	trotte /tʁɔt/	trottions /tʁɔ.tjɔ̃/	trottiez /tʁɔ.tje/	trottent /tʁɔt/
	imperfect2	trottasse /tʁɔ.tas/	trottasses /tʁɔ.tas/	trottât /tʁɔ.ta/	trottassions /tʁɔ.ta.sjɔ̃/	trottassiez /tʁɔ.ta.sje/	trottassent /tʁɔ.tas/
(compound tenses)	past	present subjunctive of avoir + past participle
	pluperfect2	imperfect subjunctive of avoir + past participle
imperative		–	tu	–	nous	vous	–
simple		—	trotte /tʁɔt/	—	trottons /tʁɔ.tɔ̃/	trottez /tʁɔ.te/	—
compound		—	simple imperative of avoir + past participle	—	simple imperative of avoir + past participle	simple imperative of avoir + past participle	—
1 The French gerund is usable only with the preposition en.
2 In less formal writing or speech, these tenses may be found to have been replaced in the following way: past historic → present perfect past anterior → pluperfect imperfect subjunctive → present subjunctive pluperfect subjunctive → past subjunctive (Christopher Kendris [1995], Master the Basics: French, pp. 77, 78, 79, 81).

Derived terms

• trotter dans la tête
• trottiner
• trottoir

Further reading

• “trotter”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.