Link Centre Dictionary

stumble

UK/ˈstʌmbəl/ US/ˈstʊmbəl/ fairly common
verb (4) noun (2)

verb

1.

walk unsteadily

  • “The drunk man stumbled about”
Synonyms
2.

miss a step and fall or nearly fall

  • “She stumbled over the tree root”
Synonyms
3.

encounter by chance

  • “I stumbled across a long-lost cousin last night in a restaurant”
Synonyms
4.

make an error

  • “She slipped up and revealed the name”
Synonyms

noun

1.
2.

an unintentional but embarrassing blunder

  • “he recited the whole poem without a single trip”
  • “he arranged his robes to avoid a trip-up later”
  • “confusion caused his unfortunate misstep”
Synonyms

Origin

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”).

Phrases

  • stumble across
  • stumble against
  • stumble into
  • stumble on
  • stumble onto
  • stumble upon
  • stumbling block

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

Narrower terms

Entails

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.