bumbling

1 of 2

adjective

bum·​bling ˈbəm-b(ə-)liŋ 

: awkwardly blundering or faltering

a bumbling speaker

: prone to or marked by foolish mistakes

a bumbling attempt to fix the problem

… many Americans see the F.D.A. as bumbling and inefficient …

—Herbert Burkholz

bumblingly adverb

… none of them truly wants him in her home while he tries, bumblingly, to get his act together …

—Laura Collins-Hughes

bumbling

2 of 2

present participle of bumble entry 1, bumble entry 2

Examples of bumbling in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Adjective

That the quarterback who first found the Patriots’ Achilles’ heel in a Super Bowl was Eli Manning—the younger, bumbling brother of football’s true prince, Peyton Manning—added to the sense that Brady could only be taken down by an accident of fate. — Jennifer Wilson, New Yorker, 21 Sep. 2026

Abrams plays a bumbling medical courier who finds out his girlfriend is pregnant, but agrees to one last delivery before heading home. — Jordan Moreau, Variety, 19 Sep. 2026

Abrams is fantastic as the bumbling protagonist, and Cregger injects a healthy dose of humor, gore, Easter eggs, and scares into the new adaptation. — Savannah Salazar, Vulture, 18 Sep. 2026

While visiting Today on Wednesday morning, Harington gushed about being chosen to portray the vain and bumbling Hogwarts professor Gilderoy Lockhart on the second season of HBO’s Harry Potter adaptation. — Shania Russell, Entertainment Weekly, 16 Sep. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

Adjective

1660, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for bumbling

• crumbling
• fumbling
• grumbling
• humbling
• mumbling
• rumbling
• stumbling
• tumbling