What's the difference between confound and stumble?

Confound


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To mingle and blend, so that different elements can not be distinguished; to confuse.
  • (v. t.) To mistake for another; to identify falsely.
  • (v. t.) To throw into confusion or disorder; to perplex; to strike with amazement; to dismay.
  • (v. t.) To destroy; to ruin; to waste.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Previous studies have not always controlled for socioeconomic status (SES) of mothers or other potential confounders such as gestational age or birthweight of infants.
  • (2) Displacing potencies for dopamine in the nanomolar range are associated with agonist-specific D-3 receptor binding and it is predicted that the component of D-2 binding with high agonist affinity may play a confounding role in many D-3 receptor studies.
  • (3) Frequently, however, only incomplete data on confounders can be obtained from sources such as next-of-kin or co-workers.
  • (4) Among all subgroups, the odds ratios adjusted for pertinent confounders and interactions fluctuated randomly by about 0.9 and showed no consistent trend with increased alcohol consumption.
  • (5) The possibility of applying Signal Detection Theory (SDT) to gustation was investigated by testing the effect of three variables--smoking, signal probability, and food intake (confounded with time of day)--on the taste sensitivity to sucrose of 24 male and 24 female Ss.
  • (6) They also include difficulties peculiar to the condition of mild mental retardation, including the choice of method of classification whether by IQ testing or administratively; the heterogeneous nature of the individuals so characterised; and the confounding effects of social and biological factors and the changes in the implications for the affected individual of the condition, depending on age, sex and environment.
  • (7) Practitioners must be aware of the potential for interactions between (and confounding by) commercially used feed components.
  • (8) A weakness was in not including confounding factors such as social class and the lack of detailed questions on topics.
  • (9) In practice, confounding by factors related to exposure opportunity is common.
  • (10) By using a national sample we ensured that the influence of regional variations in the configuration of long-term care services would not confound estimates of the relative effect of client-related factors.
  • (11) The independent effects of separation and display size, which were confounded in the Sagi and Julesz experiments, were examined.
  • (12) In particular, it is shown that adjustment for a misclassified confounding variable can be greatly improved by using the methods presented.
  • (13) Possible confounding effects of missing data, institutionalization prior to adoption, information given to adoptive parents by the adoption agencies about the child's biological background, historical period, perinatal factors, and selective placement were considered.
  • (14) I argue that (a) the procedures they used to study confounding were suboptimal because multiple measures of depression and catastrophizing were not employed and (b) the distinctiveness of constructs might better be regarded as a continuous rather than all-or-none (having adequate discriminant validity versus being confounded) concept.
  • (15) The observed relation between physical activity and colon cancer was not confounded by dietary intake of calories, fat, or protein, nor was the diet and colon cancer relation confounded by physical activity (odds ratios for calories, protein, and fat in males were 2.40, 2.57, and 2.18, respectively).
  • (16) It is this "multiple system failure" that compounds the effects of large scale events and confounds emergency response.
  • (17) To control for possible confounding variables, the authors repeated the analyses after stratifying by demographic and diagnostic variables that were distributed differently among men and women.
  • (18) Some recent reports implicate marijuana smoking as a cause of cancer of the upper aerodigestive tract, though most of the subjects were exposed to other, possibly confounding, etiologic factors, namely tobacco and alcohol.
  • (19) With the use of the logistic regression method, an adjusted OR was obtained after controlling various confounders.
  • (20) The purpose of this study was to examine the association between maternal caffeine consumption and low birthweight, intrauterine growth retardation, and prematurity, adjusting for multiple confounders.

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.