Fumble

How to spell fumble

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fumble

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fumble mean?

1. verbTo handle something clumsily or to grope about awkwardly, often dropping or mishandling it.
2. nounAn act of clumsy handling, especially a dropped or mishandled ball in sport.

Fumble in a sentence

• verb

  With cold fingers he began to fumble for the house keys in his pocket.

• noun

  A costly fumble near the goal line gave the other team possession.

• verb

  Nerves made the witness fumble over the simplest questions.

• noun

  His awkward fumble with the microphone delayed the whole speech.

Where does fumble come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Fumble appeared in English in the late 1400s and is generally traced to a Scandinavian source, comparing with the Swedish dialect word fumla and Norwegian fomle, both meaning to grope about awkwardly with the hands. A closely related Low German and Dutch form, fommelen, meant to crumple or to handle clumsily, and these neighbours of English may also have fed the word in. The base sense has always been physical: to feel for something blindly or to handle it without proper control, often because of cold, nerves, or haste. From that literal grasping it spread easily to figurative use, so a speaker can fumble for words just as the hands fumble for keys. The silent-feeling -mble cluster, shared with relatives like mumble, grumble, and stumble, is simply the frequentative -le ending tacked onto an old root, which is why the b sits quietly between the m and the l.

How the word is built

• fumb- (Scandinavian root meaning to grope clumsily)
• -le (frequentative verb suffix indicating repeated action)