Find the word definition

Crossword clues for stumbling

The Collaborative International Dictionary
Stumbling

Stumble \Stum"ble\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Stumbled; p. pr. & vb. n. Stumbling.] [OE. stumblen, stomblen; freq. of a word akin to E. stammer. See Stammer.]

  1. To trip in walking or in moving in any way with the legs; to strike the foot so as to fall, or to endanger a fall; to stagger because of a false step.

    There stumble steeds strong and down go all.
    --Chaucer.

    The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know at what they stumble.
    --Prov. iv. 19.

  2. To walk in an unsteady or clumsy manner.

    He stumbled up the dark avenue.
    --Sir W. Scott.

  3. To fall into a crime or an error; to err.

    He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion og stumbling in him.
    --1 John ii. 10.

  4. To strike or happen (upon a person or thing) without design; to fall or light by chance; -- with on, upon, or against.

    Ovid stumbled, by some inadvertency, upon Livia in a bath.
    --Dryden.

    Forth as she waddled in the brake, A gray goose stumbled on a snake.
    --C. Smart.

Wiktionary
stumbling

n. The motion of one who stumbles. vb. (present participle of stumble English)

WordNet
stumbling

adj. walking unsteadily; "a stqaggering gait" [syn: lurching, staggering, weaving]

Usage examples of "stumbling".

The people fled in all directions, trampling the fallen, grabbing children and lovers and stumbling on cobbles and broken flagstones.

She had arrived the previous day, and Isaac, stumbling and semi-coherent, had told her what had happened.

Isaac caught blurred sight of a man stumbling uncertainly towards them on the broken ground.

Yagharek picked his bound feet up high, stumbling a little, and walked unerringly towards the pathway from where they had come.

Then, with that guardian angel who cares for daring stumbling imprudent searchers of nature standing by him, Koch deftly slid this splinter under the skin of a healthy mouse.

Roux long after this distressing time when Pasteur was stumbling about in the dark.

Pasteur stumbling on this chance protection of a couple of miserable chickens, saw at once a new way of guarding living things against virulent germs, of saving men from death.

David Bruce, stumbling though the African bush, got onto the trail of the tsetse fly, accused him, convicted him.

Pony turned away, stumbling to the back of the house, holding her churning stomach.

He found a hillock, bare of trees, and scrambled up its side, stumbling more than once, for his eyes remained fixed on the sky.

Thagraine was barely twenty strides away, stumbling forward, when Avelyn started out.

He had come so far from that frightened waif stumbling out of burned Dundalis.

Pony laughed at him as he hopped about, naked, his bare feet stumbling on the cold ground.

Pony and made his own unsteady way, stumbling often, but using Hawkwing as a crutch and moving faster than the woman could have ushered him.

Axis shouted, stumbling in his efforts to reach his men still writhing helplessly on the ground.