mumbling

Pluralmumblings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   An instance of speaking in a low, unclear voice that is difficult to make out.

   Like a radio tuned slightly off the station: sound comes through, but the words blur together.

   A constant mumbling came from the back of the room throughout the lecture.

   Her mumbling was so faint that the microphone caught almost nothing.

   Similarmuttering, murmuring

   Note

   Counted and pluralized, the word often turns judgmental. The New York Times piece "Obama Challenges the Racial Divide" (2008) set "inarticulate stumblings, mumblings, evasions and half-truths" side by side, and the plural keeps that company: it suggests vague, evasive talk rather than one quiet remark. Unlike the gerund, it takes articles, adjectives and a plural freely: incoherent mumblings, a nervous mumbling.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of mumble.

   The old man was mumbling to himself as he shuffled along the path.

   Stop mumbling and tell me exactly what happened.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. After be it builds the progressive (was mumbling to himself), and in noun positions it is a gerund (stop mumbling). It works with or without an object, as in mumbling an apology or mumbling to oneself. It can also describe chewing gently with closed lips. As a gerund it can still take an object, which is how it differs from the countable noun, whose plural is mumblings.

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