(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.
Mumble
Definition:
(v.) To speak with the lips partly closed, so as to render the sounds inarticulate and imperfect; to utter words in a grumbling indistinct manner, indicating discontent or displeasure; to mutter.
(v.) To chew something gently with closed lips.
(v. t.) To utter with a low, inarticulate voice.
(v. t.) To chew or bite gently, as one without teeth.
(v. t.) To suppress, or utter imperfectly.
Example Sentences:
(1) Although mumbling is frustrating and annoying at times, it may be a helpful clue to some of the client's most anxiety-provoking thoughts or feelings.
(2) Following a string of controversies about offensive remarks, Clarkson was put on final warning by the BBC in May, after unbroadcast Top Gear footage of him mumbling the N-word during the rhyme “Eeny, meeny, miny moe” was leaked.
(3) A very inebriated Emin mumbled incoherently that "no real people" would be watching and that she wanted to go be with her mum and friends.
(4) In the footage, published on the newspaper's website , Clarkson appears to recite the beginning of the children's nursery rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe..." before appearing to mumble: "Catch a nigger by his toe."
(5) Even the most fervent haters of the BBC can only mutter and mumble when Attenborough productions are mentioned.
(6) Matt Dobson, senior forecaster with MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said the southern half of the UK had seen the worst weather, with a gust of 71mph recorded in Mumbles in the Gower peninsula, south Wales, as well of 45 to 55mph winds further inland.
(7) Of course, we’ve all mumbled the chorus of a pop song into our sternums when we’ve forgotten the exact words, but then, we probably didn’t have an audience of millions watching.
(8) It's a shame, I thought they would be out a lot earlier," she mumbles.
(9) It's a style that would find a naturally receptive audience in Austin (birthplace of mumble-core), among a crowd raised on American neo-realism.
(10) Harris, who was at the centre of a storm around recent BBC1 drama Jamaica Inn after viewers complained that they could not understand the dialogue, made light of the incident, telling the audience as he accepted his award: "Try not to mumble, try and speak clearly."
(11) In truth I found it a bit shamrocky Oirish but mumble it was fine.
(12) A lot of women have the idea that IUD, IUS and also injectables can affect future fertility in the long term, and there is really no evidence for that.” Mumbled misinformation aside, long-acting reversible contraception has a trump card, as one IUS-using friend put it: “Once it is installed in your body, you can’t not take it, so it gets rid of that pesky human error.” It’s a thought that has struck policy-makers, too.
(13) It was also, crucially, the first step in the shift away from the Winehouse of common caricature, the Olive Oyl figure with the beehive, and the drug abuse, the saucy mouth and the baleful talk of "Blake Incarcerated"; the artist people had sadly come to expect – who had once offered to lamp a member of the audience at Glastonbury, and who had last graced a stage at a festival in Serbia, where she stood swaying and mumbling before a baying audience of 20,000.
(14) The death sentence handed down to 529 protesters by an Egyptian court ( Report , 24 March) should have produced much more than mumbled regret from the British government.
(15) There are private mumblings that Miliband is not a winner.
(16) I wandered down to the local shop, and mumbled something about cigarettes, and was served: it wasn't until a day or two later that I realised my speech had become a bit buggered-about-with as well.
(17) Pellegrini, riled by Mourinho's dash across his box, hardly offered a vote of confidence in his later mumbled assessment.
(18) The rituals are well known – the cursory phone call, or brief summons to No 10, an expression of half-felt gratitude, and a mumbled explanation about the need to find space for new faces, and, if the departing minister is lucky, an exchange of public correspondence thanking them for their work on the reform of local government finance, coupled with a private promise of a seat in the unreformed Lords.
(19) We shuffled uneasily and mumbled our responses awkwardly.
(20) The lords of misrule will not be overthrown by mumbling.