Also 6 stomble. [f. STUMBLE v.]
1. An act of stumbling.
a. A missing one’s footing, a partial fall.
c. 1645. Howell, Lett. (1650), I. III. xxxi. 92. I was told of a Spaniard, who having got a fall by a stumble, and broke his nose, rose up, and in a disdainfull manner said,… This is to walk upon earth.
1743. Wesley, Jrnl., 20 Oct. Many endeavour’d to throw me down, while we were going down-hill on a slippery path to the town…. But I made no stumble at all, nor the least slip ’till I was intirely out of their hands.
1825. Scott, Talism., xxii. The horse of the knight made such a perilous stumble as threatened to add a practical moral to the tale.
1890. D. Davidson, Mem. Long Life, ix. 224. Douglas Graham’s horse had stumbled in the soft bed of the nullah, and that stumble saved his rider’s life.
fig. 1547. J. Harrison, Exhort., in Compl. Scot. (1872), 222. This is a greete stomble at the thressholde of the dore: for it is plain by histories, that Lusitania, was not called Portyngale, almost by a M. yeres, alter this supposed tyme.
1639. Fuller, Holy War, IV. xx. 203. A Prince, who in the race of his life met with many rubs, some stumbles, no dangerous falls.
† b. An ineffectual attempt. Obs.
a. 1635. Corbet, Nonsence, Poems (1807), 221. Or lyke to rhyming verse that runs in prose, Or lyke the stumbles of a tynder box.
c. A blunder, slip.
1607. Harington, Nugæ Ant. (1804), II. 49. Maister Vaghan examined him … and found him but shallow, and not very ready in the Roman tongue, his frend having been fayn to help him up, in two or three fowle stumbles, both of language and matter.
a. 1641. Bp. Mountagu, Acts & Mon. (1642), 379. A prosecution of the former Paragraph, with a stumble of Baronius.
1687. Settle, Refl. Dryden, 68. By the damnable stumbles Mr. Notes makes in them, he is quite different from Aretine in his Preface.
1736. Hervey, Mem. Geo. II. (1848), I. 408. Sir Robert, finding the stumble his brother had made [in making this suggestion] … joined in the laugh against him.
1901. Scotsman, 1 March, 7/4. The significant stumble made by the right hon. gentleman in his reply.
† d. A taking offence. Obs.
1674. Bunyan, Light for them in Darkness (1675), 35. This their stumble might arise either; 1. From the cruelty of Herod: Or, 2 From their own not observing and keeping in mind the Alarum that God gave them at his Birth.
e. A moral lapse.
1702. Engl. Theophrastus, 186. One stumble is oftentimes enough to deface the character of an honourable life.
1876. H. K. Wood, Highw. Salvation, v. 57. His stumbles and his transgressions are his sorrow.
f. A stumbling or coming by accident upon something.
1865. J. G. Holland, Plain Talk, iv. 122. There are exceptions to this rule in the lucky stumbles that are made upon extraordinary deposits of the precious stones and metals.
2. In generalized sense: The action of stumbling.
1641. Milton, Ch. Govt., I. 4. How much lesse can we believe that God would leave his … Church … to the perpetuall stumble of conjecture and disturbance.
1692. R. L’Estrange, Æsop’s Fables Life, ix. 10–11. The Clown, after a little Stumble within himself,… says … If it be the Custome of the Family, ’tis not for me to be against it.
1880. Blackmore, Mary Anerley, I. x. 135. Buoys, nets, kegs,… lay about … here and there and everywhere, upon this half-acre of slip and stumble, at the top of the boat-channel down to the sea.
† 3. A stumbling-block. Obs.
1651. H. More, Second Lash, To Rdr., in Enthus. Tri., etc. (1656), M 2 b. And truly … that Book which hath proved so mischievous a scandal, I intended onely for a stumble to wake you.
