(v. i.) To make a hollow or humming noise, like that of a bumblebee; to cry as a bittern.
Example Sentences:
(1) Eye-to-eye, the bumbling bonhomie appeared to be a lacquer of likability over a living obelisk of corporate power.
(2) Just a stepover here, a Cruyff turn there, and his opponent would be destroyed ... Only in real life, Boruc stumbled and bumbled and Olivier Giroud pounced to score.
(3) The Palestinian comedy team Watan a Watar have enjoyed huge success with their take on an Isis propaganda video featuring a roadblock and a quiz: incorrect answers mean instant execution but these jolly, bumbling jihadis win points to get them to Paradise.
(4) Wallace is a hopeless deadpan dropout, a loser in love and a bumbling muddle.
(5) Accompanied by prolonged silences, it makes the recipients go weak at the knees and blurt out bumbling apologies, as we saw with Nixon's cathartic admission – and then, of course, forgiveness.
(6) Even the suggestion that Christie might enter the race will serve to upend it, with current front-runner Rick Perry causing dismay among some Republicans after a catalogue of bumbling debate performances.
(7) The kidnapping of more than 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram threw the international spotlight on the rebels, but also highlighted a bumbling government approach to the public.
(8) And then they find a further delay, some kind of situation in the outfield with Eranga, who's had some kind of affair thrown at him from the stand; Bumble thinks it's a piece of cheese, Wensleydale, no doubt.
(9) Deep down, I believe the character really has bumbled her way through a mafia career, using her naivety as protection.
(10) Better, in fact, than Romney's bumbling foreign adventures , which rather than providing voters with a storyline on which they could take a practiced ideological stand, was likely to be seen as a mostly embarrassing, ultimately unrelatable foreign policy glad-hand tour, set to Yackety Sax .
(11) 3.50pm BST Michael Parkinson is in with Gower and Bumble.
(12) Allozyme variation at an average of 37.3 loci was assessed in queens of 16 Bombus and 2 Psithyrus bumble bee species from North America.
(13) The film shuffles interconnecting storylines concerning three Manhattan sisters: the warm, well-meaning Hannah (Mia Farrow) is married to the bumbling Elliot (Michael Caine), who is in turn attracted to her sister, Lee (Barbara Hershey).
(14) More people who voted Labour in 2015 would choose Theresa May as prime minister than Jeremy Corbyn Having endlessly bumbled around the central questions of Brexit, Labour has now come up with six “tests” for the government’s eventual agreement.
(15) As I keep saying, the IMF, ECB and Eurogroup aren’t supervillains and they aren’t bumbling incompetents.
(16) Click here for the Paddington trailer There was a swift online reaction to the still image from the film pictured above, in which Paddington looks less like the harmlessly bumbling bear of Michael Bond's books and more a malevolent creature, disturbingly sentient enough to dress itself in a duffel coat.
(17) Bumbling out of the shop with far too many sausage rolls?
(18) Jonathan was in constant demand whenever a comic toff or a bumbling cleric was called for on TV.
(19) He will be the man who wrecked his premiership by bumbling into a referendum commitment that he didn’t originally want to pledge and then bungling his country out of the EU.
(20) Clinal variation in colour morph frequency in the bumble bee Bombus melanopygusis analysed.
Hum
Definition:
(v. i.) To make a low, prolonged sound, like that of a bee in flight; to drone; to murmur; to buzz; as, a top hums.
(v. i.) To make a nasal sound, like that of the letter m prolonged, without opening the mouth, or articulating; to mumble in monotonous undertone; to drone.
(v. i.) To make an inarticulate sound, like h'm, through the nose in the process of speaking, from embarrassment or a affectation; to hem.
(v. i.) To express satisfaction by a humming noise.
(v. i.) To have the sensation of a humming noise; as, my head hums, -- a pathological condition.
(v. t.) To sing with shut mouth; to murmur without articulation; to mumble; as, to hum a tune.
(v. t.) To express satisfaction with by humming.
(v. t.) To flatter by approving; to cajole; to impose on; to humbug.
(n.) A low monotonous noise, as of bees in flight, of a swiftly revolving top, of a wheel, or the like; a drone; a buzz.
(n.) Any inarticulate and buzzing sound
(n.) The confused noise of a crowd or of machinery, etc., heard at a distance; as, the hum of industry.
(n.) A buzz or murmur, as of approbation.
(n.) An imposition or hoax.
(interj.) An inarticulate nasal sound or murmur, like h'm, uttered by a speaker in pause from embarrassment, affectation, etc.
(interj.) A kind of strong drink formerly used.
(interj.) Ahem; hem; an inarticulate sound uttered in a pause of speech implying doubt and deliberation.
Example Sentences:
(1) As he sits in Athens wondering when the International Monetary Fund is going to deliver another bailout, George Papandreou might be tempted to hum a few lines of Tired of Waiting for You.
(2) Although the cranes swing, much of the new living zones now being created range from the ho-hum to the outright catastrophic.
(3) Mononuclear cells were fractionated from human cord blood by affinity chromatography on immobilized peanut agglutinin, as previously described (Rosenberg et al., Hum Immunol 7:67, 1983).
(4) Managers scurry back and forth across the Atlantic with advance copies handcuffed to their wrists, critics are required to sign contracts promising that they will not so much as hum the contents to their nearest and dearest, and the music press acts as if the world is about to witness the most significant release since Nelson Mandela's.
(5) He shook his head from side to side, whispering or humming the same three-note tune.
(6) The apolipoprotein E3-Leiden variant has been shown to be associated with familial dysbetalipoproteinemia (FD) in a dominant manner (Havekes et al., Hum Genet 1986;73:157-163).
(7) The politics of football have long been accompanied by a background hum of corruption claims, but in recent times it has become a cacophony.
(8) Selling its own phone would mean it could make itself the background hum of many peoples' lives everywhere – and show adverts and collect data on its own terms.
(9) His father, who was fond of humming the popular ballad Keep Right on to the End of the Road, lost his job in the great depression of the early 1930s.
(10) Hollow-eyed children beg outside restaurants and cafes that hum with the chatter of shisha-smoking customers.
(11) Her hums on early awards buzz Speaking of Oscar contenders, it will be fascinating to see how Spike Jonze's latest movie pans out.
(12) That robs astronomy of one of its key recruiting tools: the chance to plant young scientists under the dish and let its hum capture their imagination.
(13) Four hours from the Zurich madhouse, Uefa’s base on the shores of Lake Geneva in Nyon hums with calm purpose.
(14) He made politics great again in the sense of getting people to care instead of allowing it to hum softly in the background.
(15) I am not sure that a lucrative career in rape gags is more helpful than a failed one, but the rape hum seems eternal.
(16) "I wouldn't say this agreement was entirely ho-hum but it does not address the big ticket issues.
(17) And I think Stephen hummed and hah-ed in an embarrassed fashion.
(18) humming, whistling) for atonal melody, but that non-musicians could not use any effective strategies for melody coding.
(19) At the moment the noise is like a city humming away.
(20) Without the faintest idea what I was humming along to, my mother left me to my obsession with nothing more than a shrug.