What's the difference between stumble and toddle?

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.

Toddle


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To walk with short, tottering steps, as a child.
  • (n.) A toddling walk.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) So off he toddled with his bindle-stick to play at running away, taking refuge at Sally's house.
  • (2) Being a toddler, she toddled a bit; she knocked over a bottle of Dettol spray, and in a staggering act of pre-school vandalism, broke the nozzle.
  • (3) Thank you, thank you,” he says, then dictates into my tape recorder: “‘You’re a fuckin’ star,’ she says walking by, an attractive young woman in burgundy jeans.” Is there a danger that he’ll lead the masses up the hill, then toddle off to Hollywood and give up on the revolution?
  • (4) Already, my toddling cousins – the people we call "digital natives" today – would pose in front of my phone and make clicking sounds: smart enough to understand what phones should be able to do; stupid enough that they could not see mine was not fit for purpose.
  • (5) She was just standing by the big sash window in her bedroom when she spotted Mrs Thatcher "toddling" around the hospital gardens unguarded.
  • (6) At the Christmas family gathering that year, Grandfather deemed any and all children present who were old enough to walk instead of toddle therefore old enough to sing a carol, recite a poem, and drink a cup of kindness made with brandy, cinnamon, and apples.
  • (7) Updated at 5.50pm BST 5.39pm BST Amid lots of yelping and squealing by idlers on the side of the road, the riders toddle around Versailles.
  • (8) The brands bang on as though they are philanthropists rather than brands seeking to lock down kids as consumers as soon as they can toddle to the pretend bank.
  • (9) Led by her exasperated mother, she toddles in coughing and spluttering helplessly into the doctor’s face.
  • (10) Despite its subject, the short story is funny and thought-provoking, based on the real event when Mantel actually spotted Thatcher "toddling" around the hospital gardens of the Windsor flat she lived in.
  • (11) Like an anxious parent unwilling to trust the house to a teenage son, Italy coach Cesare Prandelli has told Mario Balotelli that he can't risk leaving him behind when he toddles off to the World Cup.
  • (12) She's going to walk along the line with her thank you and bye-bye, then toddle round the side, duck into a limo and she's away.
  • (13) Manager news now and filling Steve McClaren’s shoes at Newcastle will be Rafa Benítez , who’ll keep the Magpies up before toddling off in the summer and paving the way for either David Moyes or Brendan Rodgers (or maybe even both) to take up the reins.
  • (14) The child, rescued from the trafficker, is now toddling around outside the house in just a nappy.
  • (15) Sure, Oxford mathematicians could toddle off to Barclays Capital.
  • (16) 9.18pm GMT 75 min: Neuer has to toddle out of his box against to reach a short back pass.
  • (17) Mitt Romney's merry world tour toddles on today with a visit to Poland.