[-ING1.] The action of the verb STUMBLE, in various senses.
a. 1400–50. Wars Alex., 2623. Þare was stomling of stedis sticking of erles.
15[?]. King & Barker, 106, in Ritson, Anc. Pop. Poetry (1791), 64. With a stombellyng as he rode the thanner downe he [the horse] cast.
1568. Grafton, Chron., II. 598. He tolde him also without anye stayeng or stomblyng,… the names of all the colours that could be showed him.
1611. Bible, 1 John ii. 10. Hee that loueth his brother, abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.
1657. Hobbes, Marks Absurd Geom., 4. I noted it only that you may be more merciful hereafter to the stumblings of a hasty Pen.
1818. Keats, Endymion, I. 703. To entice My stumblings down some monstrous precipice.
1873. G. S. Baden-Powell, New Homes, 184. Stumblings and injuries to legs are of remarkably rare occurrence.
1892–3. Froude, Lect. Counc. Trent, vi. (1896), 134. There was stumbling again at the power of the keys, and at the splendour and assumptions of the hierarchy.
b. Comb.: stumbling-shoe, a horse-shoe devised to prevent stumbling; stumbling-† stock, -stone = STUMBLING-BLOCK.
1908. Animal Management (War Office) 367. *Stumbling shoes, 244. [In text: Shoes to obviate stumbling].
1550. *Stumbling stock [see SISTER sb. 3 c].
1569. Roest, trans. J. van der Noot’s Theat. Worldlings, 31. Christ is that stumbling stocke, and the stone of offense, whereat the world stumbled.
c. 1630. Risdon, Surv. Devon (1714), II. 150. Richard Hooker … wrote a Book intitled The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a great Stumbling-Stock to many, and not answered by any.
1841. Borrow, Zincali, II. ii. III. 156. Many of which have long been stumbling-stocks to the philologist.
1526. Tindale, Rom. ix. 33. Beholde I put in syon a *stomblynge stone and a rocke which shall make men faule [Gr. λίθον προσκόμματος καὶ πέτραν σκανδάλου].
1567. Satir. Poems Reform., iii. 109. God he[t]is all that layis ane stumling stane, Quhilk may the cause be of our bretheringis fall.
1684. T. Burnet, Theory Earth, I. 294. The regularity of the universe was always a great stumbling-stone to the Epicuræans.
1780[?]. Cowper, trans. Bourne, Glow-worm, 19. Nor crush a worm, whose useful light Might serve … To shew a stumbling stone by night.
1865. Swinburne, Chastelard, II. i. (1894), 47. Some scurril children that lurked near Set there by Satan for my stumbling-stone.
