What's the difference between fall and stumble?

Fall


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To Descend, either suddenly or gradually; particularly, to descend by the force of gravity; to drop; to sink; as, the apple falls; the tide falls; the mercury falls in the barometer.
  • (v. t.) To cease to be erect; to take suddenly a recumbent posture; to become prostrate; to drop; as, a child totters and falls; a tree falls; a worshiper falls on his knees.
  • (v. t.) To find a final outlet; to discharge its waters; to empty; -- with into; as, the river Rhone falls into the Mediterranean.
  • (v. t.) To become prostrate and dead; to die; especially, to die by violence, as in battle.
  • (v. t.) To cease to be active or strong; to die away; to lose strength; to subside; to become less intense; as, the wind falls.
  • (v. t.) To issue forth into life; to be brought forth; -- said of the young of certain animals.
  • (v. t.) To decline in power, glory, wealth, or importance; to become insignificant; to lose rank or position; to decline in weight, value, price etc.; to become less; as, the falls; stocks fell two points.
  • (v. t.) To be overthrown or captured; to be destroyed.
  • (v. t.) To descend in character or reputation; to become degraded; to sink into vice, error, or sin; to depart from the faith; to apostatize; to sin.
  • (v. t.) To become insnared or embarrassed; to be entrapped; to be worse off than before; asm to fall into error; to fall into difficulties.
  • (v. t.) To assume a look of shame or disappointment; to become or appear dejected; -- said of the countenance.
  • (v. t.) To sink; to languish; to become feeble or faint; as, our spirits rise and fall with our fortunes.
  • (v. t.) To pass somewhat suddenly, and passively, into a new state of body or mind; to become; as, to fall asleep; to fall into a passion; to fall in love; to fall into temptation.
  • (v. t.) To happen; to to come to pass; to light; to befall; to issue; to terminate.
  • (v. t.) To come; to occur; to arrive.
  • (v. t.) To begin with haste, ardor, or vehemence; to rush or hurry; as, they fell to blows.
  • (v. t.) To pass or be transferred by chance, lot, distribution, inheritance, or otherwise; as, the estate fell to his brother; the kingdom fell into the hands of his rivals.
  • (v. t.) To belong or appertain.
  • (v. t.) To be dropped or uttered carelessly; as, an unguarded expression fell from his lips; not a murmur fell from him.
  • (v. t.) To let fall; to drop.
  • (v. t.) To sink; to depress; as, to fall the voice.
  • (v. t.) To diminish; to lessen or lower.
  • (v. t.) To bring forth; as, to fall lambs.
  • (v. t.) To fell; to cut down; as, to fall a tree.
  • (n.) The act of falling; a dropping or descending be the force of gravity; descent; as, a fall from a horse, or from the yard of ship.
  • (n.) The act of dropping or tumbling from an erect posture; as, he was walking on ice, and had a fall.
  • (n.) Death; destruction; overthrow; ruin.
  • (n.) Downfall; degradation; loss of greatness or office; termination of greatness, power, or dominion; ruin; overthrow; as, the fall of the Roman empire.
  • (n.) The surrender of a besieged fortress or town ; as, the fall of Sebastopol.
  • (n.) Diminution or decrease in price or value; depreciation; as, the fall of prices; the fall of rents.
  • (n.) A sinking of tone; cadence; as, the fall of the voice at the close of a sentence.
  • (n.) Declivity; the descent of land or a hill; a slope.
  • (n.) Descent of water; a cascade; a cataract; a rush of water down a precipice or steep; -- usually in the plural, sometimes in the singular; as, the falls of Niagara.
  • (n.) The discharge of a river or current of water into the ocean, or into a lake or pond; as, the fall of the Po into the Gulf of Venice.
  • (n.) Extent of descent; the distance which anything falls; as, the water of a stream has a fall of five feet.
  • (n.) The season when leaves fall from trees; autumn.
  • (n.) That which falls; a falling; as, a fall of rain; a heavy fall of snow.
  • (n.) The act of felling or cutting down.
  • (n.) Lapse or declension from innocence or goodness. Specifically: The first apostasy; the act of our first parents in eating the forbidden fruit; also, the apostasy of the rebellious angels.
  • (n.) Formerly, a kind of ruff or band for the neck; a falling band; a faule.
  • (n.) That part (as one of the ropes) of a tackle to which the power is applied in hoisting.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In the fall of 1975, 1,915 children in grades K through eight began a school-based program of supervised weekly rinsing with 0.2 percent aqueous solution of sodium fluoride in an unfluoridated community in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York.
  • (2) In all groups, there was a fall in labeling index with time reflecting increasing tumor size.
  • (3) McDonald said cutting better deals with suppliers and improving efficiency as well as raising some prices had only partly offset the impact of sterling’s fall against the dollar.
  • (4) In the clinical trials in which there was complete substitution of fat-modified ruminant foods for conventional ruminant products the fall in serum cholesterol was approximately 10%.
  • (5) Rise time and fall time constants have been quantified for describing kinetics of response.
  • (6) Elderly women need to follow the same strategies as postmenopausal women with more emphasis on prevention of falls.
  • (7) In the 153 women to whom iron supplements were given during pregnancy, the initial fall in haemoglobin concentration was less, was arrested by 28 weeks gestation and then rose to a level equivalent to the booking level.
  • (8) It is suggested that the rapid phase is due to clearance of peptides in the circulation which results in a fall to lower blood concentrations which are sustained by slow release of peptide from binding sites which act as a depot.
  • (9) Defibrotide prevents the dramatic fall of creatine phosphokinase activity in the ischemic ventricle: metabolic changes which reflect changes in the cells affected by prolonged ischemia.
  • (10) Though the 54-year-old designer made brief returns to the limelight after his fall from grace, designing a one-off collection for Oscar de la Renta last year , his appointment at Margiela marks a more permanent comeback.
  • (11) Addition of extracellular mevalonate led to a concentration-dependent fall in both processes, although a higher concentration was required to produce the same effect on LDL degradation as on HMG-CoA reductase activity.
  • (12) The fall of the cell number in the liquor cerebrospinalis was more rapidly in the GAGPS treatment.
  • (13) With fields and fells already saturated after more than four times the average monthly rainfall falling within the first three weeks of December, there was nowhere left to absorb the rainfall which has cascaded from fields into streams and rivers.
  • (14) The asthma group's fall in FEV1 was also abolished.
  • (15) Undaunted by the sickening swell of the ocean and wrapped up against the chilly wind, Straneo, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of the world's leading oceanographic research centres, continues to take measurements from the waters as the long Arctic dusk falls.
  • (16) This transient paresis was accompanied by a dramatic fall in the MFCV concomitant with a shift of the power spectrum to the lower frequencies.
  • (17) As many girls as boys receive primary and secondary education, maternal mortality is lower and the birth rate is falling .
  • (18) Compliance during dehydration was 7.6 and 12.5% change in IFV per millimeter Hg fall in IFP (micropipettes) in skin and muscle, respectively, whereas compliance in subcutis based on perforated capsule pressure was 2.0% change in IFV per millimeter Hg.
  • (19) The fall of a tyrant is usually the cause of popular rejoicing followed by public vengeance.
  • (20) If women psychiatrists are to fill some of the positions in Departments of Psychiatry, which will fall vacant over the next decade, much more attention must be paid to eliminating or diminishing the multiple obstacles for women who chose a career in academic psychiatry.

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.