dodder

The supporting cast gets to dodder about as magnified versions of Ibsen’s melodramatic figures, with Jamie Smithson a particular hoot as Hedda’s Olympian-grade nerd of a husband.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 25, 2019

And there are the plants that have strayed from their photosynthetic ways and turned to the dark side — the parasites, such as Cuscuta, or dodder.

From Nature ● Feb. 28, 2017

Note that the vines of the dodder, which has white flowers, are beige.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2015

Lithgow's Tobias is content to dodder on the margins, but when he's forced by Agnes to assume responsibility as head of the house, he summons the necessary strength.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 20, 2014

I dodder down to the station with Mom as if I’m eighty-nine.

From "Landscape with Invisible Hand" by M.T. Anderson

Scott Ward Abernethy is obviously having a blast channeling Audrey’s sadistic-dentist boyfriend, as well as assorted cameo figures, and Robert John Biedermann dodders aptly as the shop’s cantankerous owner, Mr. Mushnik.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 24, 2019

But now and then, when she fleetingly dodders, or loses her train of thought, she becomes a poignant figure.

From Washington Post ● May 10, 2017

As he dodders round his ex-wife's kitchen in west London, I wonder what that young self would have made of the man he is today.

From The Guardian ● May 21, 2010

"And still along that rocky coast, A gibbering yet a gallant ghost, He dodders, dodders at his post, Nor nears the goal; For she, the spook he cares for most, Still loves to troll."

From The Merryweathers by Julia Ward Richards

The dodders, then, are essentially parasites, and their apparent simplicity gives them a very peculiar aspect.

From Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 by Various

Mr. Mueller only doddered around painfully and failed to satisfy Mr. Cohen.

From Washington Times ● Jul. 24, 2019

Her old coot of a husband doddered over to see what the trouble was.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 25, 2018

Dominic Cavendish of the Telegraph wrote that the Pythons "came, they doddered, but they conquered."

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2014

Then he doddered on across the moat of the partly burned Palace to bow low before Emperor Hirohito and make a respectful report.

From Time Magazine Archive

He found a charm in the spectral aspect of the doddered oak.

From Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

The interview is utterly anodyne, a doddering exchange of pleasantries and carefully selected humanizing anecdotes.

From Slate ● Dec. 18, 2025

Whereas he once presented himself as a vain peacock, Clay here comes off as spacey and a bit doddering, swaddled in scarves and wide sunglasses and outfits Susie Essman might wear on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 2024

Whether Arkel is wise or a doddering old fool is a matter of question, which the veteran Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto answers with a loud affirmation of the latter.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 29, 2023

This is why nobody was expecting the opening scene of "Top Gun: Maverick" to show the title character, say, doddering around his ailing daylily farm.

From Salon ● Jun. 3, 2022

One afternoon in early April, Smith and Howard discovered Grog, Seabiscuit’s old stable pal in the Fitzsimmons barn, doddering along in a claiming race at Tanforan.

From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand