What's the difference between lapse and stumble?

Lapse


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To become ineffectual or void; to fall.
  • (v. i.) To fall or pass from one proprietor to another, or from the original destination, by the omission, negligence, or failure of some one, as a patron, a legatee, etc.
  • (n.) A gliding, slipping, or gradual falling; an unobserved or imperceptible progress or passing away,; -- restricted usually to immaterial things, or to figurative uses.
  • (n.) A slip; an error; a fault; a failing in duty; a slight deviation from truth or rectitude.
  • (n.) The termination of a right or privilege through neglect to exercise it within the limited time, or through failure of some contingency; hence, the devolution of a right or privilege.
  • (n.) A fall or apostasy.
  • (v. i.) To pass slowly and smoothly downward, backward, or away; to slip downward, backward, or away; to glide; -- mostly restricted to figurative uses.
  • (v. i.) To slide or slip in moral conduct; to fail in duty; to fall from virtue; to deviate from rectitude; to commit a fault by inadvertence or mistake.
  • (v. t.) To let slip; to permit to devolve on another; to allow to pass.
  • (v. t.) To surprise in a fault or error; hence, to surprise or catch, as an offender.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We had a brief conversation and I said to him he was acting from high honour here, and I said how sorry I was this wasn’t happening in three or four years time..because Barry is a man of honour..and I think he is a very capable premier and I think he has been missed.” Asked whether he had ever met Nick di Girolamo , the prime minister said both he and Mr di Girolamo attended a lot of functions, and “I don’t for a moment say I have never met him but I don’t recall it.” But former federal Liberal MP Ross Cameron sounded much more sceptical about O’Farrell’s memory lapse when speaking to Sky News.
  • (2) The duration and severity of the pulmonary abscess, the method of surgical treatment, the lapse of time after the operation, the course of the restorative processes, complications and concomitant diseases, the degree or respiratory and circulatory insufficiency, the patients' age, profession, and the conditions and character of work are taken into account during examination.
  • (3) In nine patients there was a temporary lapse of supervision.
  • (4) If REpower had waited until it had secured planning permission for the windfarms before it began building the turbine factory, permission would have lapsed before it had had time to supply the turbines.
  • (5) He cited the occurrence in 2011–12 of 326 "never events" – serious safety lapses that should never occur in the NHS, such as surgeons operating on the wrong part of a patient's body – as further proof that the NHS's safety culture was inadequate.
  • (6) Increases in mutant frequency were clearly induced by all eight chemicals, the magnitudes of which were dependent on the chemical, dose, method of dosing, tissue analyzed, and the time lapse between treatment and isolation of DNA.
  • (7) We report observations from time-lapse films of the development of Dictyostelium discoideum (Dd) stained with the vital dye neutral red.
  • (8) (c) In patients with MR and postoperative heart failure, there was a tendency for EF to decrease after a lapse of one month postoperatively.
  • (9) Analysis by time-lapse video microscopy indicates that two processes produce the fibers.
  • (10) In view of the prolonged lapse of time between the initial endocrine manifestations and the eventual diagnosis, even though no cause is apparent in the other three patients, it is suggested that close follow-up be carried out to rule out such a possibility in patients with this endocrine-radiological entity.
  • (11) Quantitative time-lapse videomicroscopy showed that the CT-induced retraction of osteoclasts also involved activation of the PKC pathway and could therefore be induced by phorbol esters.
  • (12) It’s just been a catalogue of disasters – the late nomination, when his party membership lapsed , the [alleged] punch-up.
  • (13) Time-lapse cinemicrography reveals that in clone B ZR-75-1 cells, which are not sensitive to the DNA synthesis-inhibitory effect of IL-6 or to its cell-separating effect on preformed colonies, IL-6 can still block rapid readherence of post-mitotic cells to their neighbors and to the substratum leading to enhanced dispersal of cancer cells into the culture medium.
  • (14) A vertebral occlusion or dissection is a problem of considerable complexity, requiring individualized management depending on the patient's symptomatology, location and nature of the injury, and time lapsed since the injury.
  • (15) On the day I arrive a time lapse of cloud is drifting across the ridge, above a geometry of Inca stairways and terraces cut into a steep, jungly spur above the Apurímac river, 100 miles west of Cusco in southern Peru.
  • (16) We have used fluorescence analogue cytochemistry in conjunction with time lapse recording to study the dynamics of alpha-actinin, a major component of the Z line, during myofibrillogenesis.
  • (17) Measurements of the soluble TNF receptor (sTNF-R) concentrations in healthy individuals at time lapses of 3 months (17 individuals) or 1 year (51 individuals) showed a significant correlation between the first and the second measurements from each individual, implying that individual differences are stable.
  • (18) The dynamic nature of Chlamydia trachomatis inclusions was studied by video and 35 mm time-lapse photomicrography of live cells, and by immunolocalization of inclusions in fixed cells.
  • (19) The authors report on the frequency of family congenital heart disease in a consecutive series of 380 congenital patients, studied in the lapse of one year in the Pediatric Cardiology Service of the National Institute of Cardiology of Mexico.
  • (20) A time lapse cinemicrographic study shows that, at low concentrations, nicotine can speed up cytokinesis and, at high concentrations, prolong the duration of metaphase in HeLa cells.

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.