(v. i.) To murmur or mutter with discontent; to make ill-natured complaints in a low voice and a surly manner.
(v. i.) To growl; to snarl in deep tones; as, a lion grumbling over his prey.
(v. i.) To rumble; to make a low, harsh, and heavy sound; to mutter; as, the distant thunder grumbles.
(v. t.) To express or utter with grumbling.
(n.) The noise of one that grumbles.
(n.) A grumbling, discontented disposition.
Example Sentences:
(1) Should I man up, chuck out the Union flags and get back to grumbling about the Games?
(2) I have weekly massages to iron out all the bumps and grumbles in my legs.
(3) But the huge shortfalls, and the grumblings of African countries, are not going to matter as much in Washington as the fact that Obama can claim that he went face to face with China – and won.
(4) Although, among jobbing-actor roles in series such as Casualty, Lovejoy and Inspector Morse, he also appeared in the Dennis Potter drama Cream in My Coffee (1980), with Peggy Ashcroft; a TV version of Mr Jekyll and Hyde (1990) and Ending Up (1989), based on the Kingsley Amis novel about old buffers going grumbling to their doom.
(5) No: people want to see live animals!” The purists will grumble.
(6) The couple were not married, and there were grumblings that, with no official status as first lady, she should not be spending money on her five personal assistants and the running of an independent office in the Elysée.
(7) Stop grumbling about renewables and unlock the opportunities they offer.
(8) The companies would be in no position to grumble about unfair tactics since they are guilty of worse.
(9) West Ham's manager of three years, who steered the team to a 13th-place finish this season after flirting with relegation for long periods, held talks with the co-chairman David Sullivan on Tuesday amid grumbling supporters' discontent at the style of football the side have played.
(10) Shirburn grumbled, Ayer apologised, the tanks rolled on.
(11) "Diane sold her principles by sending her kids to private school and spending a lot of time on the box cosying up to Michael Portillo, making comments for the sake of projection on TV," one grumbled, anonymously, yesterday.
(12) Starting with the visit of Canadian rivals Toronto FC , who grumbled their way through last week’s home defeat by KC and whose mood won’t have been improved by a 3-0 thrashing in DC in midweek.
(13) "Bilge," he grumbled when another student wanted to know about his links with a lobbying firm that later worked for Colonel Gaddafi.
(14) They'd grumble, but that's business, as it happens every day.
(15) Since Peter Hall was allowed leaves of absence for other projects by sometimes grumbling chairmen ( as charted in his published Diaries ), there has been an emphasis on the job being full-time.
(16) There were authors grumbling about not going to the Oscars .
(17) Recent collaboration between traditionally fractious teaching unions to oppose cuts to the school rebuilding programme gained more traction than the usual grumbles about pay because it spoke to parents as well as professionals.
(18) He has grumbled a lot about obstruction by the civil service, but not actually done much about it.
(19) English friends had explained to me, not without pride, the importance of grumbling to the national character, but I still want to stress to every Londoner I meet that — take it from a visiting Los Angeleno — the tube exists, and that counts as no trifling achievement.
(20) Jeremy Hunt grumbled that because patients would not know their out-of-hours doctors, they would opt to go to A&E instead.
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.