fumble

1. 1.

   feel about uncertainly or blindly

   “She groped for her glasses in the darkness of the bedroom”

   Synonymsgrope

   Broadersearch
2. 2.

   make one's way clumsily or blindly

   “He fumbled towards the door”

   Synonymsblunder

   Broaderpass
3. 3.

   handle clumsily

   Broaderhandle
4. 4.

   make a mess of, destroy or ruin

   “I botched the dinner and we had to eat out”

   “the pianist screwed up the difficult passage in the second movement”

   Synonymsbotchbodgebumblebotch upmuffblowflubscrew upball upspoilmuck upbunglefluffbollix

   Broaderfail
5. 5.

   drop or juggle or fail to play cleanly a grounder

   “fumble a grounder”

   Broaderplay

   baseball

1. 1.

   (sports) dropping the ball

   Synonymsmuff

   Broaderblunder

   baseball · American football

Other forms of fumble

plural

fumbles·

past tense

fumbled·

present participle

fumbling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about fumble

What does fumble mean?

fumble means "feel about uncertainly or blindly". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in fumble?

fumble has 2 syllables: fum-ble. The stress falls on "fum". In IPA it is /ˈfʌmbəl/.

What is another word for fumble?

Close synonyms include grope, blunder, botch, bodge, bumble. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is fumble a common word?

fumble is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.