What's the difference between stumble and teeter?

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.

Teeter


Definition:

  • (v. i. & t.) To move up and down on the ends of a balanced plank, or the like, as children do for sport; to seesaw; to titter; to titter-totter.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Video games specialist Game was teetering on the brink of collapse on Friday after a rescue deal put forward by private equity firm OpCapita appeared to have been given the cold shoulder by lenders who are owed more than £100m.
  • (2) Slowing growth, financial fragility, governments teetering on the brink of insolvency and default, and clear signs of a public backlash against the excesses of the rich and powerful: all have created a sombre backdrop to the invitation-only affair.
  • (3) But did those people waking up on this day in January 100 years ago actually believe Britain was teetering on the brink of war?
  • (4) According to the then-city budget director, Peter Goldmark Jr, “Many people believe there is little or no real security or receivables behind these obligations.” Wall Street bankers, who had enabled much of this reckless behavior, now abruptly refused to take up any more of the city’s notes, leaving it teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
  • (5) But "cliff-edge" households – perhaps as many as 3.6m in England alone – now find themselves teetering precariously on the brink of poverty.
  • (6) In reality, it is exacerbating Greece's contradictions, while Greece is teetering on the edge of a cliff.
  • (7) I gaze, bemused and, yes, fascinated, at curious anthropological artefacts such as Bride Wars or He's Just Not That Into You or Confessions of a Shopaholic, in which Kate Hudson or Ginnifer Goodwin or Isla Fisher play characters who might almost belong to a third gender, a bubble-headed one that emits ear-splitting shrieks, teeters constantly on the verge of hysteria and acts as an indiscriminate mouthpiece for the placement of overpriced tat.
  • (8) "Pakistan continues to teeter on non-governability … Pakistan's education lags behind Bangladesh's.
  • (9) To care for heart transplant recipients is to walk an endless tightrope, teetering between too little immunosuppression, and consequent rejection episodes, and too much immunosuppression, with its correlated infection and neoplasia risks.
  • (10) These are not the figures of a man teetering on the edge or an army on the brink of national humiliation.
  • (11) Mention of his alleged complicity appears to have set off Kasidiaris during the talk show appearance that has highlighted Greece's teetering position on the edge of dysfunction and despair.
  • (12) On the verge of defeat the yellow and green Fanatics in the crowd, forever teetering on the line between amusing and annoying, urged him “fight, Nicky, fight” and he did just that.
  • (13) Presence and the relation of the nerve endings with associated structures in the lund of Rattus rattus rufescens (Indian black rat) and Francolinus pondicerianus (grey partridge or safed teeter) has been studied by cholinesterase technique.
  • (14) After a night of tough bargaining, European leaders have appeared to salvage what had seemed to be a summit teetering toward failure by agreeing early on Friday to funnel money directly to struggling banks, and in the longer term to form a tighter union.
  • (15) When Raymond Schwab talks about his case, his voice teeters between anger and sadness.
  • (16) There is a palpable feeling in the country that the ruling junta has run out of ground, teetering on the precipice and threatening to take the country with it.
  • (17) Photograph: guardian.co.uk Seven months later, despite the economy teetering close to a triple dip recession, the Tories' 2% lead has now stretched to 7% with 29% preferring Cameron and Osborne and just 22% putting their faith in the Labour duo.
  • (18) IFS inequality chart IFS warns of biggest squeeze on pay for 70 years over Brexit Read more “These troubling forecasts show millions of families across the country are teetering on a precipice, with 400,000 pensioners and over one million more children likely to fall into poverty and suffer the very real and awful consequences that brings if things do not change.
  • (19) The sector's problems are set to continue in 2012 as shoppers continue to cut back on non-essential spending and the economy teeters on the edge of recession.
  • (20) Innervation of the pancreas with reference to blood vessels, pancreatic duct, and islets of Langerhans has been studied in Francolinus pondicerianus (grey partridge or safed teeter).