stumble

1. 1.

   an unsteady uneven gait

   Synonymslurchstagger

   Broadergait
2. 2.

   an unintentional but embarrassing blunder

   “he recited the whole poem without a single trip”

   “he arranged his robes to avoid a trip-up later”

   “confusion caused his unfortunate misstep”

   Synonymstriptrip-upmisstep

   Broaderblunder

Other forms of stumble

plural

stumbles·

past tense

stumbled·

present participle

stumbling·

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 stumble

What does stumble mean?

stumble means "walk unsteadily". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in stumble?

stumble has 2 syllables: stum-ble. The stress falls on "stum". In IPA it is /ˈstʌmbəl/.

What is another word for stumble?

Close synonyms include falter, bumble, trip, hit, slip up. 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 stumble a common word?

stumble is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.