teeter vs turtle

teeter

verb
  • To tilt back and forth on an edge. 

  • To be close to becoming a typically negative situation. 

  • To be indecisive. 

noun
  • A teeter-totter or seesaw. 

turtle

verb
  • To flip over onto the back or top; to turn upside down. 

  • To turn and swim upside down. 

  • To hunt turtles, especially in the water. 

  • To build up a large defense force and strike only occasionally, rather than going for an offensive strategy. 

  • To move along slowly. 

noun
  • A small element towards the end of a list of items to be bubble sorted, and thus tending to take a long time to be swapped into its correct position. Compare rabbit. 

  • A type of robot having a domed case (and so resembling the reptile), used in education, especially for making line drawings by means of a computer program. 

  • An Ancient Roman attack method, where the shields held by the soldiers hide them, not only left, right, front and back, but also from above. 

  • A low stand for a lamp etc. 

  • A breakdancing move consisting of a float during which the dancer's weight shifts from one hand to the other, producing rotation or a circular "walk". 

  • An on-screen cursor that serves the same function as a turtle for drawing. 

  • A marine reptile of that order. 

  • The curved plate in which the form is held in a type-revolving cylinder press. 

  • Any land or marine reptile of the order Testudines, characterised by a protective shell enclosing its body. See also tortoise. 

How often have the words teeter and turtle occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )