wobbly
adjective
shaky; unsteady.
wobbly
1 American
[wob-lee]
/ ˈwɒb li /
Or
wabbly
adjective
wobblier,
wobbliest
Wobbly
2
American
[wob-lee]
/ ˈwɒb li /
noun
-
Wobblies
plural
wobbly
1
British
/ ˈwɒblɪ /
adjective
-
unsteady
-
trembling, shaking
noun
Wobbly
2
British
/ ˈwɒblɪ /
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of wobbly1
First recorded in 1850–55; wobble + -y 1
Origin of Wobbly2
An Americanism dating back to 1910–15; of uncertain origin
Explanation
If something's wobbly, it has a tendency to sway or lurch from side to side, like the wobbly wheel on a broken tricycle or the wobbly legs of a cruise ship passenger who has just set foot on solid ground after a week at sea. If your chair is wobbly, you may need to tighten the legs with a screwdriver. And if you're feeling wobbly during gym class, you probably need to sit down and drink some water. Anything or anyone that wobbles can be described as wobbly, and both words come from a root meaning "to weave back and forth." When the word is capitalized, it's a nickname for a member of the labor union called International Workers of the World.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The court heard Fong also called into the garden for Cookie to get down, which is when Jones came towards her "wobbly".
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026
GameStop’s sales have been wobbly, amid the flight to digital gaming.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 7, 2026
Investors expected several cuts this year, on top of three in late 2025, thanks in part to a wobbly job market that left officials worried that high rates were doing more harm than good.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 17, 2026
He’s just bracingly honest and notoriously wobbly when asked to verbalize the significance of everything and anything — from his poetically dense lyricism to the whole of his revered music career.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2026
It was not the high, wobbly yowl of a cub, but the pure, heart-wrenching song of a young wolf.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
Wobbly economic conditions could prompt Fed officials to lower rates more than the single cut they penciled in for 2026 back in December.
From Barron's ● Mar. 17, 2026
Wobbly China recovery after the country put an end to its “zero-COVID” policy has also prevented demand from rebounding quickly.
From Reuters ● Jul. 25, 2023
Well, he says those would be the ones that "became classics", such as Don't Show Keith Your Teeth and the Wibbly Wobbly game.
From BBC ● Dec. 8, 2022
Based on her firsthand experience, she says that vendors you’ll definitely want to visit include Flat Tack Farm, Red Truck Farm, Wobbly Cart Farm and Reister Ranch.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 15, 2022
Wobbly with dread, I walked up the hallway and rasped up the twisted stairs, “Hello?”
From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell
The Wobblies, as Rye notes, are “the one big union that took anyone as a member: Finnish logger, Negro seamstress, Indian ranch hand, even floater like them.”
From Slate ● Oct. 30, 2020
“The Cold Millions” doesn’t romanticize what successes the Wobblies might have achieved in the face of lawyers, wealthy businessmen and assorted skullduggery.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2020
CSAs are "building a new world in the shell of the old," as the Wobblies said.
From Salon ● Jul. 19, 2020
Neither the Mormons nor the Wobblies fit comfortably in narratives of Western development dominated by cowboys, railroad men, ranchers and other boomer archetypes.
From New York Times ● Jun. 1, 2020
"I. W. W. Songs," a Red booklet published at the Chicago headquarters, has already met with such popularity among the "Wobblies" that fourteen editions have been published.
From The Red Conspiracy by Joseph J. Mereto
Now the industry limps along by focusing on artificial intelligence; private equity also has experienced setbacks and looks even wobblier to me.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 18, 2026
The cycle gets wobblier but it doesn’t change.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 21, 2025
That could slow the winds and make the Arctic vortex weaker and wobblier.
From The Verge ● Feb. 1, 2019
Zoom in closer, and that career arc looks wobblier than a late-career Manning spiral.
From Slate ● Mar. 6, 2016
His stance grew wobblier with each passing second, but somehow he managed to make eye contact with me.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
Since that time, scientists have used what they have learned about gravitational waves to observe a black hole devour a neutron star, glimpse inside neutron stars and even discover the wobbliest black hole ever seen.
From Salon ● Nov. 28, 2023
Since then, the discovery of gravitational waves have allowed scientists to peer inside neutron stars and discover the wobbliest black hole ever detected.
From Salon ● Jun. 29, 2023
Science news headlines regularly tout how gravitational waves are allowing scientists to do new things like peer inside neutron stars and discover the wobbliest black hole ever detected.
From Salon ● Nov. 18, 2022
Open to become the first woman in 27 years to hold all four majors in a calendar year, it would cap another milestone for the record-breaking American: the wobbliest dominant season in tennis history.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 29, 2015
And their boxes and steamships are the wobbliest things.”
From Maida's Little Shop by Inez Haynes Gillmore
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
