What's the difference between mumble and speak?

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.

Speak


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To utter words or articulate sounds, as human beings; to express thoughts by words; as, the organs may be so obstructed that a man may not be able to speak.
  • (v. i.) To express opinions; to say; to talk; to converse.
  • (v. i.) To utter a speech, discourse, or harangue; to adress a public assembly formally.
  • (v. i.) To discourse; to make mention; to tell.
  • (v. i.) To give sound; to sound.
  • (v. i.) To convey sentiments, ideas, or intelligence as if by utterance; as, features that speak of self-will.
  • (v. t.) To utter with the mouth; to pronounce; to utter articulately, as human beings.
  • (v. t.) To utter in a word or words; to say; to tell; to declare orally; as, to speak the truth; to speak sense.
  • (v. t.) To declare; to proclaim; to publish; to make known; to exhibit; to express in any way.
  • (v. t.) To talk or converse in; to utter or pronounce, as in conversation; as, to speak Latin.
  • (v. t.) To address; to accost; to speak to.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But when he speaks, the crowds who have come together to make a stand against government corruption and soaring fuel prices cheer wildly.
  • (2) Whittingdale also defended the right of MPs to use privilege to speak out on public interest matters.
  • (3) The cause has been innumerable "VIP movements", as journeys undertaken by those considered important enough for all other traffic to be held up, sometimes for hours, are described in South Asian bureaucratic speak.
  • (4) Many speak about how yoga and surfing complement each other, both involving deep concentration, flexibility and balance.
  • (5) Speaking to pro-market thinktank Reform, Milburn called for “more competition” and said the shadow health team were making a “fundamental political misjudgment” by attempting to roll back policies he had overseen.
  • (6) Speaking to a handpicked audience of community representatives, the prime minister said he had not allowed the EU to get its way.
  • (7) Technically speaking, this modality of brief psychotherapy is based on the nonuse of transferential interpretations, on impeding the regression od the patient, on facilitating a cognitice-affective development of his conflicts and thus obtain an internal object mutation which allows the transformation of the "past" into true history, and the "present" into vital perspectives.
  • (8) The distribution of cells at the stage of DNA synthesis and mitosis in all the parietal peritoneum speaks of the absence of special proliferation zones.
  • (9) Again, the boys in care that he abused now speak to us as broken adults.
  • (10) It’s the same story over and over.” Children’s author Philip Ardagh , who told the room he once worked as an “unprofessional librarian” in Lewisham, said: “Closing down a library is like filing off the end of a swordfish’s nose: pointless.” 'Speak up before there's nothing left': authors rally for National Libraries Day Read more “Today proves that support for public libraries comes from all walks of life and it’s not rocket science to work out why.
  • (11) Speaking in the BBC's Radio Theatre, Hall will emphasise the need for a better, simpler BBC, as part of efforts to streamline management.
  • (12) The ability to demonstrate selective augmentation of the functional matrix-associated receptor population, and our recent results showing that gonadotropes are indeed the responsive cells (Singh P, Muldoon TG, unpublished observations) speak to the specificity and relevance of these findings.
  • (13) Clare Gills, an American journalist and friend of Foley, wrote in 2013: “He is always striving to get to the next place, to get closer to what is really happening, and to understand what moves the people he’s speaking with.
  • (14) There is a certain degree of swagger, a sudden interruption of panache, as Alan Moore enters the rather sterile Waterstones office where he has agreed to speak to me.
  • (15) The debate certainly hit upon a larger issue: the tendency for people in positions of social and cultural power to tell the stories of minorities for them, rather than allowing minority communities to speak for themselves.
  • (16) Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, People's Liberation Army's chief of the general staff Gen Fang Fenghui also warned that the US must be objective about tensions between China and Vietnam or risk harming relations between Washington and Beijing.
  • (17) Speaking at The Carbon Show in London today, Philippe Chauvancy, director at climate exchange BlueNext, said that the announcement last week that it is to develop China's first standard for voluntary emission reduction projects alongside the government-backed China Beijing Environmental Exchange, could lay the foundations for a voluntary cap-and-trade scheme.
  • (18) "There were around 50 attackers, heavily armed in three vehicles, and they were flying the Shebab flag," Maisori added, speaking from the town, where several buildings including hotels, restaurants, banks and government offices were razed to the ground.
  • (19) Maryam Namazie, an Iranian-born campaigner against religious laws, had been invited to speak to the Warwick Atheists, Secularists and Humanists Society next month.
  • (20) A doctor the Guardian later speaks to insists it makes no sense.