What's the difference between falter and stumble?

Falter


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To thrash in the chaff; also, to cleanse or sift, as barley.
  • (v. & n.) To hesitate; to speak brokenly or weakly; to stammer; as, his tongue falters.
  • (v. & n.) To tremble; to totter; to be unsteady.
  • (v. & n.) To hesitate in purpose or action.
  • (v. & n.) To fail in distinctness or regularity of exercise; -- said of the mind or of thought.
  • (v. t.) To utter with hesitation, or in a broken, trembling, or weak manner.
  • (v. i.) Hesitation; trembling; feebleness; an uncertain or broken sound; as, a slight falter in her voice.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The compromised ice sheet tilts and he sinks into the Arctic Sea on the back of his faltering white Icelandic pony.
  • (2) When you have champions of financial rectitude such as the International Monetary Fund and OECD warning of the international risk of an "explosion of social unrest" and arguing for a new fiscal stimulus if growth continues to falter, it's hardly surprising that tensions in the cabinet over next month's spending review are spilling over.
  • (3) The use of a more 'appropriate' growth curve of exclusively breast-fed, healthy infants instead of the NCHS reference failed to define more accurately the age at which growth faltering starts.
  • (4) Playboy's globally recognisable "bunny ears" image remains untarnished by economic factors, but its business has faltered amid a rise in free adult entertainment online.
  • (5) The main symptom "incoordination" (ataxia, asynergy, paresis, paralysis) is used by us more precisely only in case of impairment of nervous system by neoplastic infiltrations and does not signify as possible symptoms of general physical weakness, for example faltering, staggering, tumbling or lameness.
  • (6) Against the backdrop of a faltering global economy, turmoil in the country’s stock markets and overcapacity in factories, Chinese economic growth has slowed markedly.
  • (7) Kerry flew into the Afghan capital in an attempt to salvage the faltering political and technical agreements that he had brokered between Ghani and his presidential rival, Abdullah Abdullah .
  • (8) Some people believe that it just works but the reality is that the online buyer-seller relationship can falter at any one of a number of hurdles.
  • (9) It is the liberal drive, with its obsessive seeking of a universal position, that ultimately obscures the violence taking place in this faltering dialogue.
  • (10) With China a key driving force behind already faltering global growth, its relations with the new US president will come into sharp focus.
  • (11) The dismal numbers followed a series of factory surveys since the start of 2014 that have pointed to weakness in economic activity as demand has faltered at home and abroad.
  • (12) Yet, “if the expansion was to falter or if inflation was to remain stubbornly low, the [Fed] would be able to provide only a modest degree of additional stimulus by cutting the federal funds rate back to near zero”.
  • (13) The clinical picture of repeated infection causing growth faltering followed by oedema, hair and skin changes, resembled the response to infection of many nutritionally stressed children in the tropical world.
  • (14) The median time for faltering in exclusively fed infants in Jordan was 6 months.
  • (15) When markets falter and banks fail it's the jobs and the homes and the security of the squeezed middle that are hit the hardest.
  • (16) The relationship between the prevalence of nine different categories of diseases and growth was investigated to determine the quantitative contribution of the diseases to the growth faltering observed.
  • (17) Xi has brushed aside concerns about his country’s faltering economy, telling an audience of business leaders in London that it would remain the powerhouse of the global economy.
  • (18) While the patient is undergoing evaluation of pelvic pain, it is essential that clinicians remain aware that the patient's psychogenic symptoms are an attempt to reinforce a faltering ego.
  • (19) Next on his list would be the faltering economy, social justice and reinforcing freedom and democracy.
  • (20) The welfare cap is lined up, as the bedroom tax continues and disability benefits falter.

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.