(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.
Stammer
Definition:
(v. i.) To make involuntary stops in uttering syllables or words; to hesitate or falter in speaking; to speak with stops and diffivulty; to stutter.
(v. t.) To utter or pronounce with hesitation or imperfectly; -- sometimes with out.
(n.) Defective utterance, or involuntary interruption of utterance; a stutter.
Example Sentences:
(1) Two middle-aged subjects, a male and female, with spastic dysphonia (hoarseness, stammering) were treated with both frontalis and throat muscle electromyographic (EMG) biofeedback.
(2) Analysis of these data and comparison with structural results from the preceding paper (Matthews, D.A., Bolin, J.T., Burridge, J.M., Filman, D.J., Volz, K.W., Kaufman, B. T., Beddell, C.R., Champness, J.N., Stammers, D.K., and Kraut, J.
(3) One can consider the relation to the mother, the accession to the spoken word, the voice's wealth and possibilities, the necessity of the listening and of silence, with in all its aspects the emergence of the differences in stammerer subject or not.
(4) The relative roles of heredity an environment in the expression of stammering were evaluated.
(5) [Pre-programmed only to ask questions, Small Talk begins to overheat and stammer] Erm, erm, no idea.
(6) He was also a man who overcame great hardship to become an MP and make it to the cabinet - born in Tredegar, forced to leave school at 13, self-taught and having struggled to overcome a debilitating stammer in his childhood.
(7) The children were examined for headaches, memory deterioration, difficulties in the learning, some types of tics, stammering, and psychomotor disinhibition.
(8) These observations are expected since the crystals were grown in the absence of divalent cations (Stuart, D. I., Levine, M., Muirhead, H., and Stammers, D. K. (1979) J. Mol.
(9) And just as our great moments in cinema concern stammering monarchs, so the likes of Garrone choose to examine criminality, and now the fetid scourge of reality TV.
(10) This delay enabled the badger cullers to drive away into the darkness and continue their work without having to suffer the terror of a journalist politely stammering, "Excuse me sir, how is the badger cull going?"
(11) A lot of people with speech impediments [French has a lifelong stammer] find themselves making puns, because if you get words and letters mixed up in your head you can make a joke of it.
(12) He was witty, sympathetic and generous, with an engaging stammer that tended to come and go.
(13) Yet Gentleman's article is moving in its description of all those taking part: struggling single mums; a teenager with acne, a stammer and life-long unemployed parents; drink and drug addicts; and a recovering cancer patient.
(14) I stammered out a few one-liners I’d written, and a couple of bits about being short largely filched from Ronnie Corbett.
(15) I'm Hadley from the Guardian and – " I stammered pathetically.
(16) As Blair stammered, huffed and shifted in his seat, Stewart concluded that: “19 people flew into the towers.
(17) A testing method is presented in which paired pictures are used which differ by the phonologic opposition of some stammered sounds.
(18) Did you know that King George VI had a very serious stammer?
(19) Asked by Mrs Tolstoy whether he has read War and Peace, Bulgakov stammeringly replies: "Many times."
(20) This could be a major factor disordering the interhemispheric relations in the stammering etiopathogenesis.