What's the difference between grumble and mutter?

Grumble


Definition:

  • (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.

Mutter


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To utter words indistinctly or with a low voice and lips partly closed; esp., to utter indistinct complaints or angry expressions; to grumble; to growl.
  • (v. i.) To sound with a low, rumbling noise.
  • (v. t.) To utter with imperfect articulations, or with a low voice; as, to mutter threats.
  • (n.) Repressed or obscure utterance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) When accused of muttering it while reciting Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo, during filming of BBC2s Top Gear, he said he had not, that he would absolutely never use "the most racist word of them all".
  • (2) It's the kind of TV that makes for a wipe-your-weekend-plans box set: the ending of every crack-fix of an episode had me twitchily reaching for the remote to a muttered internal monologue of: "Next one, next one, now, now…" Danes carries the series as the bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison, whose furious vigilance is hard to distinguish from pathological mania as she investigates, and ultimately falls for, Sergeant Brody (Damian Lewis), a Marine who may or may not be a terrorist after eight years held captive by al-Qaida.
  • (3) Brownites used to mutter bitterly about their hero for failing to compete with Tony Blair after the death of John Smith.
  • (4) And that voice like a whip-crack: impish, transgressive, swooping from a mutter to a scream.
  • (5) Sampson became the discreet, muttering centre of a web, connected by telephone and letter, telegram and fax, to an astounding cast of world leaders and commentarians, film stars and novelists.
  • (6) For what it's worth, Labour lost on a whopping great 18% swing to the Tories, yet despite an awful lot of muttering absolutely nothing happened.
  • (7) True, he has trounced them so thoroughly that any mutterings of future challenges are an empty blast of sour breath.
  • (8) Two years as a minister is plenty of time to stack up enemies, or at least a few mutterings that you’ve made a hash of the job.
  • (9) Obviously it should be scoffed down in a box set, like a Supersize V Superskinny obese person's enormo-breakfast, before a period of lying green-faced in a darkened room, listening to experimental jazz, muttering, "Carrie can't let another mistake happen!
  • (10) "It's going to destroy property prices in this area," muttered one.
  • (11) As he checks the woman’s heart with a stethoscope, he explains exactly what is about to happen to her – the nurses will hook her up to an EKG machine, among other procedures – and gets the woman to lie down, still muttering at the original nurse but pliable.
  • (12) "Any politician that claims to you that they're an ordinary person is not telling you the truth," Miliband mutters, half smiling and wincing.
  • (13) Even the most fervent haters of the BBC can only mutter and mumble when Attenborough productions are mentioned.
  • (14) It was a misjudgment in the heat of the moment.” The forlorn-looking Formula One world champion muttered: “I can’t really express the way I’m feeling at the moment so I won’t attempt to.
  • (15) Not via muttering idiots, but upfront, with an acrid twist.
  • (16) He’s not just a straight-talker, he’s a man who reliably says the things politicians dream their opponents will be caught muttering within range of forgotten radio-mics – except he declaims them on a podium in front of thousands.
  • (17) ", seconds before splashing about in the sub-zero Atlantic muttering "bugger".
  • (18) Bit of muttering about justifying selling one's own grandmother Updated at 1.21pm BST 1.06pm BST As Barb Jacobson, of the European Citizen's initiative for a basic income, puts it, a basic income should be high enough for everyone to have a dignified life in society, and to take part in society.
  • (19) One woman muttered angrily to her companion: "It is the dumbing down of America."
  • (20) Some of the mutterings from Threadneedle Street are not the stuff to give the troops."