stumble
Plural: stumbles
Noun
- an unsteady uneven gait
- an unintentional but embarrassing blunder
- A fall, trip or substantial misstep.
- An error or blunder.
- A clumsy walk.
Verb
Verb Forms: stumbled, stumbling, stumbles
- To miss one's step and nearly fall; to make a mistake.
- walk unsteadily
- "The drunk man stumbled about"
- miss a step and fall or nearly fall
- "She stumbled over the tree root"
- encounter by chance
- "I stumbled across a long-lost cousin last night in a restaurant"
- make an error
- To trip or fall; to walk clumsily.
- To make a mistake or have trouble.
- To cause to stumble or trip.
- To mislead; to confound; to cause to err or to fall.
- To strike or happen (upon a person or thing) without design; to fall or light by chance; with on, upon, or against.
Examples
- He didn’t stumble on STUMBLE, but he did trip over the rules for hyphenated words.
- He stumbled over a rock.
- I always stumble over verbs in Spanish.
- Last night, you drunkenly stumbled to the front door, waking up the whole house.
Origin / Etymology
Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *stam- (“to trip up; to stammer, stutter”), thereby related to German stumm (“mute”), Dutch stom (“dumb”). Doublet of stammer. Also related to verb in Dutch stommelen (“to walk silently”).
Synonyms
bumble, falter, hit, lurch, misstep, slip up, stagger, trip, trip up, trip-up, blooper, blunder, boo-boo, defect, error, fault, faux pas, fluff, gaffe, lapse, mistake, slip, thinko
Scrabble Score: 11
stumble: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordstumble: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
stumble: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary