Stumble

How to spell stumble

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stumble

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stumble mean?

1. verbTo trip or momentarily lose your balance while walking or running.
2. verbTo hesitate or make mistakes while speaking or performing a task.
3. nounA trip, slip, or minor blunder.

Stumble in a sentence

• verb

  The dark hallway made him stumble over the loose rug.

• verb

  Nervous candidates tend to stumble over difficult interview questions.

• noun

  A single stumble on the icy path sent her shopping bags flying.

• verb

  Runners often stumble on the uneven cobblestones near the finish line.

• verb

  He began to stumble through the wedding speech after losing his notes.

• noun

  The actor recovered quickly from an early stumble in his opening line.

Where does stumble come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word comes into Middle English as stumblen, and it is most likely of Scandinavian origin, related to Old Norse and the Norwegian dialect word stumla, meaning to grope or trip clumsily. The underlying root carried the sense of being unsteady on one's feet or moving haltingly, and it is closely connected to the same family that gives us 'stammer', where the body or the speech falters. The little -le ending is a frequentative suffix, the same one found in 'fumble', 'tumble', and 'mumble', which signals a repeated, clumsy, or wobbly action; this is why so many awkward-motion words in English share that comfortable -mble cluster. The silent b sits between the m and the l, an intrusive consonant that English speakers historically inserted to ease pronunciation, and that hidden b is the main spelling trap. From the literal idea of tripping over something, the word naturally widened to mean making an error or hesitating in speech, and by extension to coming across something by chance, as in stumbling upon a discovery.

How the word is built

• stumb- (Scandinavian root meaning to trip or be unsteady)
• -le (frequentative verb suffix indicating repeated or faltering action)