stumbling

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of stumble.

   The toddler went stumbling across the room toward the couch.

   Stumbling through the dark hallway, he knocked over a lamp.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. As a participle it builds progressives (she was stumbling) and describes nouns (a stumbling toddler). As a gerund it names the act itself (stumbling cost him the race). It carries every meaning of stumble, figurative ones included: stumbling over a hard word, or stumbling on, upon or against something found by chance, where the preposition is part of the meaning.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The unsteady, lurching movement made by someone who trips or loses their footing.

   Her sudden stumbling on the uneven floor drew worried looks from the crowd.

   The dancer's stumbling broke the smooth flow of an otherwise flawless routine.

   Similarstaggering, lurching, tottering, tripping, faltering

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun can be counted: it has a plural, stumblings, and in the plural it readily turns figurative. Alexander Star, writing in the New York Times in 2008, sets "the blind stumblings of natural selection" against deliberate human problem-solving. There, aimless movement stands for progress by trial and error. Blind is a natural partner when the word means groping rather than tripping.

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