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

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

As their cousins the morning glories are to this day, the dodders in their first estate were true climbers.

From Little Masterpieces of Science: The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer by George Iles

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

There were a thousand places to go to, a thousand pleasant things to do; yet he doddered, full of ill-temper, dissatisfaction, and self-contempt.

From The Place of Honeymoons by Arthur Ignatius Keller

With characteristic savagery, Wolff portrayed Murdoch as a doddering nonagenarian unable to parse the changes in the cable business and unwilling to accept that American conservatism’s center of gravity had shifted away from him.

From Slate ● May 15, 2024

Some aides, according to Axios, wish Mr. Biden would more often show this side of him to counter concerns that the 80-year-old is too doddering for office amid frequent oral gaffes.

From Washington Times ● Jul. 11, 2023

Attention must be paid to the core audience that has stuck it out and been filling these doddering old venues with their seasoned laughter and empathy.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 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

The Marquess of Tilbury’s doddering hand rose to his pocket handkerchief.

From "Secrets at Sea" by Richard Peck