teeter-totter

WordNet

ride on a plank (同)teetertotter, seesaw
(of structures or institutions) having lost stability; failing or on the point of collapse; "a tottering empire"
unsteady in gait as from infirmity or old age; "a tottering skeleton of a horse"; "a tottery old man" (同)tottery
move without being stable, as if threatening to fall; "The drunk man tottered over to our table"
move unsteadily, with a rocking motion (同)seesaw, totter

PrepTutorEJDIC

おぼつかない足取りで歩く,よろよろ歩く(立ち上がる) / ぐらつく
(…で)ふらふらする,ぐらぐらする,動筋する《+on+名》 / ふらつき,動揺
= teeter-totter = seesaw

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出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』「2015/07/22 20:32:55」(JST)

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A set of playground seesaws.

A seesaw (also known as a teeter-totter or teeterboard) is a long narrow board pivoted in the middle so that, as one end goes up, the other goes down.

Mechanics

Mechanically, a seesaw is a lever and fulcrum.^[1]

Seesaws also work as a simple example of a mechanical system with two equilibrium positions. One side is stable, while the other is unstable.^[1]

Varieties

Seesaws are manufactured in creative shapes and designs

The most common playground design of seesaw features a board balanced in the center. A person sits on each end, and they take turns pushing their feet against the ground to lift their side into the air. Playground seesaws usually have handles for the riders to grip as they sit facing each other. One problem with the seesaw's design is that if a child allows himself/herself to hit the ground suddenly after jumping, or exits the seesaw at the bottom, the other child may fall and be injured. For this reason, seesaws are often mounted above a soft surface such as foam or wood chips.

A seesaw or teeter-totter in a children's playground in Ottawa, Ontario, 2010

Seesaws also are manufactured in shapes designed to look like other things, such as airplanes, helicopters,^[2] and animals.

Seesaws, and the eagerness of children to play with them, are sometimes used to aid in mechanical processes. For example, at the Gaviotas community in Colombia, a children's seesaw is connected to a water pump.^[3]

Name origin and variations

Girl hanging from a seesaw, Chicago, Illinois, 1902

Seesaws go by several different names around the world. Seesaw, or its variant see-saw, is a direct Anglicisation of the French ci-ça, meaning literally, this-that, seemingly attributable to the back-and-forth motion for which a seesaw is known.

The term may also be attributable to the repetitive motion of a saw. It may have its origins in a combination of "scie" - the French word for "saw" with the Anglo Saxon term "saw." Thus "scie-saw" became "see-saw."

In most of the United States, a seesaw is also called a "teeter-totter". According to linguist Peter Trudgill, the term originates from the Nordic language word tittermatorter.^[4] A "teeter-totter" may also refer to a two-person swing on a swing seat, on which two children sit facing each other and the teeter-totter swings back and forth in a pendulum motion.

Both teeter-totter (from teeter, as in to teeter on the edge) and seesaw (from the verb saw) demonstrate the linguistic process called reduplication, where a word or syllable is doubled, often with a different vowel. Reduplication is typical of words that indicate repeated activity, such as riding up and down on a seesaw.

In the southeastern New England region of the United States, it is sometimes referred to as a tilt or a tilting board.

Makeshift seesaws are used for acrobatics.

Speakers in northeastern Massachusetts, United States, sometimes call them teedle boards. In the Narragansett Bay area the term changes to dandle or dandle board.

According to Michael Drout, "There are almost no "Teeter-" forms in Pennsylvania, and if you go to western West Virginia and down into western North Carolina there is a band of "Ridey-Horse" that heads almost straight south. This pattern suggests a New England origin or importation of the term that spread down the coast and a separate development in Appalachia, where Scotts-Irish settlers did not come from New England. "Hickey-horse" in the coastal regions of North Carolina is consistent with other linguistic and ethnic variations.^[5]

References

^ ^a ^b Benedek, George Bernard (2000). Physics, with Illustrative Examples from Medicine and Biology: Mechanics. New York: Springer. p. 379. ISBN 978-0-387-98769-9.
^ Lifetime Playground, playsets and play equipment: Teeter-Totters
^ [1],[2]
^ teeter-totter listing in TheFreeDictionary.com
^ Drout, Michael D.C. (2006). A History of the English Language (Course Guide) (PDF). Recorded Books, LLC. p. 98. ISBN 978-1-4281-1730-3. Retrieved 2010-04-12.

English Journal

Teeter-totter.

Dick T.SourcePlatte Valley Ambulance, Brighton, CO, USA. boxcar414@comcast.net
JEMS : a journal of emergency medical services.JEMS.2013 Jan;38(1):22.
PMID 23627229

Reversible histidine phosphorylation in mammalian cells: a teeter-totter formed by nucleoside diphosphate kinase and protein histidine phosphatase 1.

Wieland T, Hippe HJ, Ludwig K, Zhou XB, Korth M, Klumpp S.SourceInstitut für Experimentelle und Klinische Pharmakologie und Toxikologie, Medizinische Fakultät Mannheim, Universität Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany.
Methods in enzymology.Methods Enzymol.2010;471:379-402. doi: 10.1016/S0076-6879(10)71020-X. Epub 2010 Mar 1.
Regulation of protein phosphorylation by kinases and phosphatases is involved in many signaling pathways in mammalian cells. In contrast to prokaryotes and lower eukaryotes a role for the reversible phosphorylation of histidine residues is just emerging. The β subunit of heterotrimeric G proteins,
PMID 20946858

Syntheses, crystal and electronic structures, and physical properties of two quaternary chalcogenides: La(4)FeSb(2)Q(10) (Q = S, Se).

Zhao HJ, Li LH, Wu LM, Chen L.SourceKey Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials Chemistry and Physics, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, Fujian 350002, People's Republic of China.
Inorganic chemistry.Inorg Chem.2009 Dec 21;48(24):11518-24. doi: 10.1021/ic900784t.
Two new quaternary chalcogenides, La(4)FeSb(2)S(10) and La(4)FeSb(2)Se(10), have been synthesized from the stoichiometric mixture of elements by solid-state reactions at 1100 degrees C. The compounds crystallize in the orthorhombic space group Pbcm with a = 15.066(4) A, b = 7.590(2) A, c = 13.341(4)
PMID 20000645

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