(superl.) Without skill or grace; wanting dexterity, nimbleness, or readiness; stiff; awkward, as if benumbed; unwieldy; unhandy; hence; ill-made, misshapen, or inappropriate; as, a clumsy person; a clumsy workman; clumsy fingers; a clumsy gesture; a clumsy excuse.
Example Sentences:
(1) In both, objective aggravation occurred in three or more steps over four days, progressing from minor finger clumsiness to total paralysis of the arm.
(2) Since she was 25-year-old, she had had insomnia which accompanied by choked feelings, palpitations, clumsiness of hands and anxiety.
(3) Salmond and his finance secretary, John Swinney, have pushed for Scotland to be given control over corporation tax, excise duties and greater borrowing powers in the new bill, but those measures were rejected as ill thought out and clumsy by the UK government and Labour.
(4) The problem is that, whilst severely affected children can be readily recognized, identification of mildly and moderately clumsy children is difficult.
(5) Clumsy US tactics and policies exacerbated a deteriorating situation.
(6) Several lines from the 1984 song were heavily criticised here and in Africa for being clumsy and patronising, including the one about no rivers flowing in Africa – the continent of the Nile, Congo and Niger.
(7) Ethanol impaired performance in most objective tests and produced clumsiness, muzziness, and mental slowness, but little drowsiness.
(8) The unfairly maligned camel is a model of sleek, practical and elegant design compared with the clumsy creature the coalition has produced.
(9) The arcane wiring when electricity came along, the subsequent clumsy rewiring; the cheap flat conversion in the 1960s; the constant saga of patch and mend from occupants who never have the money or vision to remake the whole thing from scratch - all this, and more, was paralleled on the WCML on an enormous scale.
(10) It is difficult to comprehend the logic of expecting improvements in this agenda while withdrawing half a billion dollars in funding to many service agencies, and leaving them poised precariously at the mercy of a clumsy and poorly executed “advancement” strategy.
(11) DZ but not O 60 was reported to have caused lethargy and clumsiness during subchronic treatment.
(12) A nine year-old girl admitted to our hospital complaining of clumsiness of hands and walking, disability of reading, headache and vomiting.
(13) Her main project is new girl Tai (the late Brittany Murphy) who arrives at school as a clumsy, unconfident "ugly duckling" ripe for making over – allowing the film to indulge in that wonderful 80s teen movie trope: the dressing up montage.
(14) Clinical syndromes were classified according to Fisher's criteria into pure motor hemiparesis (PM), sensorimotor stroke (SM) and ataxic hemiparesis (AH) including dysarthria clumsy hand syndrome.
(15) Observations by parents and teachers rated the clumsy children inferior to their controls in writing, sporting ability and clumsiness.
(16) Even if the move seemed dictatorial in the short term, it served to enshrine a constitution that in the long-term actually curtails Morsi's power – which to the Brotherhood makes his actions well-intentioned, if clumsy.
(17) The children with learning disabilities were divided into two groups--"clumsy" and "nonclumsy"--based on their scores on the motor impairment test.
(18) Fulham were furious in 2012 when Liverpool's attempt to take Clint Dempsey from them saw the Merseyside club deliver clumsy bulletins.
(19) Analysis of the data indicated that, as expected, the clumsy children with learning disabilities scored significantly lower than the children without learning disabilities (the control group).
(20) Abnormal clumsiness in otherwise normal children has often been associated with both perceptual and motor defects, but the cause of this problem remains unclear.
Stumble
Definition:
(v. i.) 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.
(v. i.) To walk in an unsteady or clumsy manner.
(v. i.) To fall into a crime or an error; to err.
(v. i.) To strike or happen (upon a person or thing) without design; to fall or light by chance; -- with on, upon, or against.
(v. t.) To cause to stumble or trip.
(v. t.) Fig.: To mislead; to confound; to perplex; to cause to err or to fall.
(n.) A trip in walking or running.
(n.) A blunder; a failure; a fall from rectitude.
Example Sentences:
(1) Former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell, also weighed in for Clinton in a New York Times opinion piece on Friday, declaring: “Donald J Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.” Republicans stumbling from the wreckage of a terrible week are worrying about how to contain the damage further down the ballot paper in November as people running for seats in Congress and at state level risk being swept away.
(2) On Saturday I made my second trip to the campsite in Lower Stumble – my first journey was on 28 July.
(3) 11.10pm BST Apart from the stumbles in the sales pitch, it's still not clear how the Abbott government will secure most of its budget.
(4) CBS, which says it stumbled across its advance copy in a bookstore, happens to own the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster.
(5) However, the main stumbling block is the increasingly chronic shortage of many different types of medical staff – nurses, GPs, paramedics, radiologists, A&E doctors and many others – that the NHS is facing.
(6) The surprise move came after Tuesday's much-noticed stumble, when the US supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, jumbled the words, prompting Obama to follow suit.
(7) Myners – a non-executive director of Co-op group – was also scathing in his assessment of the board members after asking them a simple retail question and likening their inability to answer to that of Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-op bank, who had stumbled over basic questions posed by the Treasury select committee last year.
(8) Unfortunately, a lack of knowledge regarding the field among the general public and within the medical community as well functions as a major stumbling block to the growth of our profession.
(9) He may not be the greatest orator, sometimes stressing the wrong word in a sentence or stumbling over his Autocue, and he may not deliver media-managed soundbites with the ease that the PM does, but he is good with the public.
(10) Polls opened at 4am across the country, which suffered decades of army-led dictatorship followed by a stumbling reform process.
(11) 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.
(12) In the most uncomfortable and revelatory moments, Cameron stumbled as he was asked whether he saw Brooks every weekend in 2008 and 2009, before his wife Samantha told him in the lunchtime break that they had met every six weeks, or a bit more.
(13) He was like the man with staring eyes who stumbled up and down Oxford Street with a placard declaring the end of the world to be nigh.
(14) So intense was the pre‑match excitement in Dortmund over the return of the prodigal Jürg – much of it media-led – that walking around this flat, functional city on the afternoon of the game you half expected to stumble across Klopp shrines, New Orleans-style Klopp jazz funerals, to look up and find his great beaming visage looming over the city like some vast alien saucer.
(15) It is essential, therefore, that a legal agreement is agreed at the COP21 talks in order to create a process after Paris through which countries will review their efforts and find ways to ramp up their actions on reducing emissions.” A major stumbling block facing negotiators at Paris will be finance.
(16) Poyet will feel infinitely worse should Sunderland stumble once again at Spurs.
(17) There are pages where, unexpectedly, amid the horror, a reader feels he has stumbled on a near-inconsequential diary entry.
(18) She stumbled to her door, but found she could not walk out; she had to crawl as the ground swayed beneath her.
(19) Diane Abbott will continue to be a key figurehead in Labour’s general election campaign, the party has indicated, despite a stumbling radio performance in which she struggled to explain how a pledge to hire 10,000 extra police officers would be funded.
(20) But in that case, it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms.