Doiter verb to stagger, to become confused or muddled
‘… it was a struggle for Jamie not to laugh, despite … his irritation at the boys’ squabbling. “Will ye wee doiters no keep your paws off…”’ (Voyagaer)
Doiter (also ditter) has several senses. It’s often used to denote senility or the confusion of old age. There is an example from Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song (1932): ‘Old Sinclair … had begun to doiter and Mistress Sinclair would push him into his chair at night and take off his boots and put slippers on him.’
It can also mean to make someone else confused or befuddled, as here: ‘The pawkie [cunning] wee quean has doiter’d me clean.’ (Alexander Whitelaw, The Book of Scottish Song, 1844.)
In Lament for the Maker (1938), Michael Innes uses the word to mean stagger and draws this wonderful picture: ‘The laird had taken down a rusty claymore from the wall and was doitering about with it like mad Hamlet looking for King Claudius of Denmark.’ The same usage appears in J Halliday’s Rustic Bard (1847): ‘We totter through the birkie bank, an doiter owre the brae.’ That is how it’s used in the citation from Voyager - denoting unsteady toddlers. And to doiter can also mean to loiter or linger. ‘Auld care gangs doiterin’ by my door.’ R M Calder, Poems (1897)
The word appears later in a glowing review of the performance of one J A R Fraser as the Lord Chancellor in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe: ‘It is not being fulsome to record that Mr Fraser invested the part with a professional polish. He was not content to leave his characterisation to the traditional dithering and doitering … a tremendous performance.’ Broughty Ferry Guide and Advertiser (7 September 1957).
Finally, the Ulster Scots writer, S Thomson, uses it in his poem Watty and Meg. A Tale: ‘Watty weary a day threshin’, Doiter’d down to Mungo Blue’s.’ (Poems, on Different Subjects, Partly in the Scottish Dialect 1793). If you’re wondering if Mungo Blue’s might be a public house, reading on confirms that it was. Here’s the following line: ‘Dryster Jock was there, and Pattie, And Will that wins ayont the hill; - “Come awa”, quo’ Johny, “Watty, Let us hae another gill”.’