bumbling

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

Examples of bumbling in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Accompanying them are a pair of bumbling, conniving peasants who may or may not be their friends. —Samantha Bergeson, IndieWire, 9 June 2025

So there is this tradition of the bumbling jerk in a way, that is also a hero in some respect, some of that is just the nature of narrative. —Maelle Beauget-Uhl, Forbes.com, 24 May 2025

But O’Connor’s the main man in The Mastermind, Reichardt’s movie about a bumbling art thief. —Baz Bamigboye, Deadline, 23 May 2025

Their son, Dylan, was snatched from his day care years earlier and rescued, his bumbling kidnappers imprisoned and eventually paroled. —Hamilton Cain, New York Times, 17 May 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1660, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for bumbling

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