How To Use Fumbling In A Sentence

  • The filly's head whirled around and she nickered softly before fumbling toward me, nudging my palm as I held my hand out.
  • We bumbled around each other like Laurel and Hardy in the gloom, fumbling for a torch we couldn't find.
  • Jay snuggled back down into his goose down pillows and picked up a tennis ball to ideally throw at the ceiling, then he looked at Chris who was still fumbling with his words.
  • Fumbling, my fingers clumsy and slow, I fought with the buttons on his soaking-wet shirt.
  • With fumbling fingers, he took his transmitter out from where it had been hidden in his cloak.
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  • She was fumbling around in the dark looking for the light switch.
  • The cast does its adequate best - you can't blame the players for occasionally fumbling such leaden material.
  • I was sitting in Panera Bread last night, fumbling around with proxies in an attempt to get around their ham-fisted network filtering.
  • Set in Easter Ross, it follows the Bain family from David and Jean's premarital fumblings to the moment when their grown-up son sets off for a better life across the Atlantic.
  • While the Canadian government, for all its faceless fumbling bureaucracy, isn't infallible, we've also never had an iron-fisted strongman declare every Monday a holiday to honour his dog.
  • An hour later we were still stumbling and fumbling through the trees and the quality and originality of our cursing had to be heard to be believed.
  • Because I didn't know what was wrong and no amount of fumbling self-analysis via a computer screen was going to tell me.
  • On a play from scrimmage, if an offensive player fumbles anywhere on the field during fourth down, only the fumbling player is permitted to recover and/or advance the ball.
  • The opening shot, a stunning long take from a fixed camera, dispassionately observes the fumbling stick-up of a jewelry store.
  • You hesitate for a few seconds and your new friend Bob starts fumbling in his back pocket.
  • These men who had awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old muddle of schools and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling, half-figurative, half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of weakening and confusing suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride and honor of adolescence doubted and stumbled and fell, became nothing but a curious and pleasantly faded memory. In the Days of the Comet
  • But, as you would expect, the Inspector is no mug and played our fumbling probing with the skill of an experienced fly fisherman, which in fact he is.
  • You looked into her eyes, your mouth fumbling for the words.
  • My fumbling attempt to answer Justice McHugh is to this effect, that of course there can be the extraterritorial legislation which makes part of the record, treats as the Tribunal's doings what is done in Greece.
  • Far from being plugged with a slug of lead, the loser's fumbling fingers have only cost him a little face in front of his fellow fast draw enthusiasts.
  • Also some of the buttons have a raised edge to help the visually impaired, but which are also handy when you're fumbling around for the pause button in the dark.
  • The only thing holding me up would be fumbling at the combination lock or renting a towel.
  • The smell of perfume takes me right back to those furtive fumblings.
  • My friend Brian says it's high-school fumbling.
  • He shrugged out of his jacket and her hands went to his cotton shirt, fumbling in their haste to undo the buttons.
  • This stupid, nervous teenage fumbling, making out thing.
  • In the city's lavish beaux-arts facades and lobbies, farewell smooches and the rustle of tipsy last minute fumblings, still linger faintly in the air today.
  • David muttered something incoherent and rude and scrambled to his feet, fumbling for the sword.
  • Or my more recent sexual fumblings and drinking escapades.
  • This inexpert fumbling had nothing to do with the Funchal nights. THE GOLDEN LION
  • I was a fumbling mess typically just the boys I hang out with play, but yesterday I decided to tag along with them it was more fun than I thought it would be ... but I don't think I was born to toss a Frisbee into a chain infested basket things that I did wrong: Archive 2009-04-01
  • He hauled his jacket on, his shaking fingers fumbling to fasten the zip.
  • The screaming, the heroism and reasonable panic, the fumbling in semi-darkness for mobile phones - it was our safe distance from it all that was so horrifying.
  • For the driver, the instruments are easy to read and use, although the door mirror control is hidden by a steering wheel stalk, and a bit of fumbling is needed to use it.
  • The liquid quickly soaked his grey socks and he stepped out of the fuming puddle in no time, fumbling to take off the wet articles of clothing.
  • In London yesterday, where crowds fumbling with mobile phones tried to find unimpeded ways across the city, there was much evidence of the truth of Auden's insight.
  • She came flying out of the bathroom, hands fumbling to attach a backing to an earring.
  • Fumbling for the switch, he brought the lamp off its perch.
  • ‘They came back, they were back after me again,’ she spoke quickly and rapidly, fumbling for words over the choking of her tears.
  • He sits bolt upright, his hand fumbling around for the reading glasses.
  • Here are three fumbling attempts at an answer. Christianity Today
  • The street light gag, fumbling the cigarettes?
  • He was fumbling in his pocket for money.
  • Within little more than 60 years of that first fumbling flight along a North Carolina beach we had left the earth altogether and set foot upon another world.
  • He started fumbling for the pockets of his trousers, which were somewhere under the clematis. Excerpt: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
  • She was fumbling around in the dark looking for the light switch.
  • The Trickster archetype is usually the Fumbling father portrayed in family sitcoms. Fathers and Masculinity at SF Novelists
  • The mayor, fumbling for words of succor at a press conference, had suggested that God's will was somehow behind those who got out alive.
  • His dewy-eyed, slightly fumbling sincerity - his brilliantly articulate impersonation of earnest inarticulacy - has all along been tied to this self-projection as a Good Man.
  • Before, you're mostly just fumbling around in the dark, hoping that nods of approval from editors reflect the attitude of the general literary audience, but not really having any idea.
  • Fumbling with a glass of champagne, his monocle popped out and dangled in the drink.
  • His critics say his fumbling of the issue of reform has eroded his authority.
  • A White House official told me Friday night that, after fumbling around for days, practically every White House agency was getting involved in coping with Katrina.
  • After fumbling around with it, the boot suddenly swung open.
  • Outwardly uncaring but intensely frustrated, Anaïs listens to their nocturnal fumblings in silent fury.
  • This approach has led many to wonder if the apparent madness in the method is deliberate or if he is fumbling around aimlessly.
  • With the same detached honesty he famously records the great events, the invaluable ongoing political story, as well as his own foolishnesses and lustful fumblings.
  • Cody was much less productive, fumbling the ball at crucial times and finding his way into coach Dave McGinnis' doghouse.
  • I felt a resigned smile tug at my lips as I watched him, still not calmed down from the moment we'd shared and fumbling for words.
  • The Dutchman must have wished for the kind of goalkeeping which met his strike during his six-month spell without a goal, Stephane Balogh fumbling the shot into the corner despite getting two hands to it. Sport news, comment and results | guardian.co.uk
  • My teeth may be rotting, but I've still got twenty-twenty vision... Not that it's much good when you're fumbling around in the dark. A SONG AT TWILIGHT
  • On screen, however, he's a bumbling, fumbling, stuttering feeb.
  • The screaming, the heroism and reasonable panic, the fumbling in semi-darkness for mobile phones - it was our safe distance from it all that was so horrifying.
  • There was a lot of fumbling around and the alarms were set off inside - they kept interrupting and it was pretty awkward. The Sun
  • This leased amd turion zm80 based laptop has linked fumbling distinctive patience laptop phoneshops and players for all pair types, since the thin 30 years. Wii-volution
  • There were skirmishes, flirtations and drunken fumblings all the way up the east coast, but never the right person or the right time.
  • Here are three fumbling attempts at an answer. Christianity Today
  • His long, stricken pause when she asks him to come up with another word for "ostentatious" is as funny as his fumbling answers: "Delicious? Matt's TV Week in Review
  • Barney you write with an almost womanly insight, detailing as you normally do things such as the curve of a calf, the slabbed definitions, the plucked eyebrows, the fumbling disappointments. Can Joe Hart save himself from the curse of the England keeper? | Barney Ronay
  • Now Chris has two weeks to turn a batch of fumbling snowboard losers into winners.
  • She dressed, her cold fingers fumbling with the buttons.
  • Will I be there to embarrass myself amidst a group of relative strangers by relating the fumblings of junior high spin-the-bottle antics?
  • Next to us, people were fumbling with candles, some fishing for matches in their packs and purses, others using the taper below the row of candles to light their candle.
  • All you had to do was switch on the light and they'd sort themselves out, heads down and fumbling at their disarranged clothes. PROSPECT HILL
  • There was a lot of fumbling around and the alarms were set off inside - they kept interrupting and it was pretty awkward. The Sun
  • That sounds quaint today but our grandkids will laugh at the idea of fumbling around for a remote control. The Sun
  • Dylan's bedroom soliloquies and I-just-bit-a-lemon frowns look like the usual diaristic fumblings of self-navigation that have snowballed lately into a culture of confessional YouTube clips -- canonical descendants of the LonelyGirl15 character who, if she appeared back in the '80s, might just have written bad poetry and shelved it in her closet. Jeremy Axelrod: "quarterlife": Gen-Y Bloggers Shake The Cradle
  • The ones I receive now are rife with disgust at bureaucratic fumbling, with rage at an unspecified they who are in charge of everything from predicting which levees would break to choosing which people will return.
  • I was fumbling with the key as I couldn't see where the lock was in the dark.
  • There was a lot of fumbling around and the alarms were set off inside - they kept interrupting and it was pretty awkward. The Sun
  • Up at Tannadice Park, after years of fumbling around in the darkness for a chink of light, fans are indeed beginning to dream of a bright, orange future.
  • J. T. McVeigh, the Barrie Examiner, for an amusing shot of a defender holding onto an opponent's undergear in a high school football game; Derek Ruttan, London Free Press, for a close-up shot of a high school football player fumbling the ball. The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed
  • Though the plan to give Henry a heavier workload is a good one, he must show he can consistently hang on to the ball after fumbling 11 times in 2002.
  • Does make an effort to secure the ball before running and fumbling is not an issue. ... USATODAY.com
  • Blue yanked her coat on, shoving past them and locking the door with fumbling fingers.
  • It is interesting (if a little painful) to look back on one's own early fumbling attempts, and I have highlighted my mistakes as well as lessons I learned from them.
  • I mean, when I visit people I actually do know really well, I'm not opening cabinets, snooping around the bathroom, fumbling around in closets.
  • All at sea and like strangers fumbling around in the dark for the light switch, the City defence was so brittle it was a surprise the creaks couldn't be heard back in North Yorkshire.
  • There was a fumbling noise as the Propes' answering machine came on.
  • The actors create a relaxed chemistry together as they veer between the solidarity of the three musketeers and the dimwitted fumbling of the three stooges.
  • Fumbling, fingers clumsy in her panic, she dragged at the plastic retaining clips.
  • And being able to simply swap mags to reload is much easier than fumbling with loose rounds while wearing gloves, stumbling thru snow covered branches and all the while trying to keep focused on where you think your deer went down. Rifles of Interest, Vol. 1
  • However, the fact remained that the mention of her name conjured up assorted visions-starting with Jamie kissing her ardently in an alcove at Castle Leoch, and ending with him fumbling up her nightgown in the darkness of their marriage bed, hands warm and eager on her thighs-that made me snort like a grampus and feel the blood throb hotly in my temples. A Breath of Snow and Ashes
  • Drawing the covers up with a fumbling hand, he draped his arm around the other person in the bed, absently kissing Jane's shoulder as she began to stir.
  • After a bit of Kiwi and Louisaiana accent fumbling… I got to hear the sexy drawl of another very special friend of mine.
  • Sex: just endless hours of mind games which ended in a few minutes of dark, wet fumbling in a strangers bedroom.
  • But with the spectre of The Hague on the horizon, perhaps this desperate, defensive fumbling is all it has left. Archive 2009-12-01
  • I did the slow pack and the even slower fumbling in my purse for the exact change but my heart and mind weren't in it.
  • ‘Whatever,’ he mumbled, fumbling his pockets for his keys.
  • They must stop looking leaderless, fumbling, unfocused, disorganized, and confused.
  • That sounds quaint today but our grandkids will laugh at the idea of fumbling around for a remote control. The Sun
  • Melan came back to the door and peered out at him, a single figure stood in the middle of a corridor, fiddling with his hoodie like a fumbling child.
  • While clearly a charming and witty person, most of his exchanges with the audience seemed a bit fumbling and half-finished.
  • That sounds quaint today but our grandkids will laugh at the idea of fumbling around for a remote control. The Sun
  • The restaurant is practicing on you, and in exchange for their fumbling you get to eat and drink copiously, for free. Last Night « PubliCola
  • The jackknife was in my hand as soon as my fumbling fingers could manage the pockets on my jumpsuit.
  • And we don't mean a John-Roberts-word-fumbling not swearing in, we mean a full-fledged non-codification of their membership in the 112th Congress. HUFFPOST HILL - I Do Solemnly Swear That I Will Support And Def--Hey Are Those Crab Puffs?
  • Her face was ashen as she fumbling with her helmet, and I realized that her life support and backup had failed.
  • The morning after I flew back home for spring break, I found myself fumbling around the kitchen cabinets for breakfast food that didn't boast high-fiber content.
  • But the inclusion (if only for thoroughness 'sake) of a section on "inartificial" proofs opens the door to a wider conception of rhetoric, an "administrative" mode of persuasion that would often fit Machiavelli's recipes to perfection and that Skinnerian observations about persuasion and control are, however fumblingly, concerned with. An Exchange on Machiavelli
  • Finally, I break away and lay back on the bed, extending my hand to the night table, fumbling to open the drawer.
  • Avoid dark-alley groping and unladylike fumbling in the back of a cab," the guide says on the subject of one night stands.
  • If you take the first fumbling attempt at clarity, and miss out the qualifications and the additions, misrepresenting someone is easy.
  • At first, fumbling with chopsticks, he found it hard to grasp the food.
  • I was fumbling around, as the audience murmured in disbelief. Times, Sunday Times
  • Blue yanked her coat on, shoving past them and locking the door with fumbling fingers.
  • The next day, G. W. Smith had made fumbling and overcautious efforts to continue the battle and, on June 2, had suffered an illness which he described as paralysis. LEE’S LIEUTENANTS
  • The ignorant fumblings, the personal embarrassment, the ‘is this right?’
  • Ian Mackintosh says that until there's some disclosure of non-material expenses the regulator is fumbling around in the dark when it comes to investigating this area.
  • Here, that's not the way, swaddy, "he continued, joining the two soldiers, who, each still holding his musket in his hand, were fumbling awkwardly with the long ladder in carrying it across the yard. The New Forest Spy
  • The beginning of the film is a kind of black satire mockumentary, as we follow a fumbling mustached bureaucrat as he attempts to serve eviction notices on the displaced ghettoized aliens to relocate them further into the desert. WATCHING: District 9
  • But he must protect the ball better after fumbling 12 times last season.
  • As for those instances of humiliation — whether in fumbling through French text before a ten-year-old ... or in the stories that I have lived and that will never be told — my mind now calls up a peaceful bergerie, wherein an unspoiled baby would come to suffer all humility; this, instead of me. Mangeoire - French Word-A-Day
  • It has a brilliantly fun Self Shot setting—when the flip-up screen is set up like a mirror, as shown here, you simply tap it to take a pic instead of fumbling to press the shutter button. Say 'Cheese,' Pose and Share
  • I began fumbling for words to say in response, still struggling to get over the fact that Tristan was, indeed, a Gypsy.
  • The plane is decked out with a comfy bed with springs that do not squeak, which is more more comfortable than fumbling around in a cubicle the size of a broom cupboard. Mile High Club
  • Is winding up in the back of a taxi at four o'clock in the morning, fumbling ineptly with unfamiliar zippers a good sign?
  • But he did try his best, fumbling over his words.
  • Orion was fumbling for words to reply to her with.
  • I was fumbling with the key as I couldn't see where the lock was in the dark.
  • The result is a fantastic ensemble fumbling their way through a meandering, atmospheric thriller without the thrills. Times, Sunday Times
  • As he felt Joe begin fumbling with his trousers Michael stifled an urge to slam his fist into Joe's head.
  • The subhead says, ‘But most of us are still fumbling around in the information stone age.’
  • Nervously, I moved forward, fumbling round the battlements until I came to a protruding wooden pole.
  • She quickly ripped the letter out, letting the envelope fall to the ground, fumbling with the paper a bit, trying to unfold it.
  • Never again will the White House be able to point to his often-praised performance after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, without skeptics recalling the fumbling and slow-off-the-mark response of his administration after the hurricane and the flooding in New Orleans. 09/16/2005
  • My only hope here is that Schwimmer manages to direct the film well and the idea of fumbling a film about a topic that could really do a good job of getting a strong message out there. Filmstalker: Owen in Internet grooming film
  • Why shave after you get home to the pitch black cabin and repeat the fumbling around?
  • This can also be due to a bit of fumbling while lifting the print from the surface where it's found as well as environmental factors.
  • She was fumbling around in the dark looking for the light switch.
  • After a little fumbling around, Brock grinned widely and with a grunt pulled a very large, very angry badger out of his sett.
  • He and his friend from jr. high were both too young to know what they were doing and it ended up just being awkward kisses and fumbling touches in the dark.
  • The drunken fellow was fumbling at the keyhole.
  • A party that is described as fumbling, confused and scared is unlikely to win elections even if they endorse the wholesale round-up of hippies and the nuking of Mecca. Hullabaloo
  • `No, you withered, senseless, quibbling, drivelling, fumbling nincompoop! THE RIVAL QUEENS: A COUNTESS ASHBY DE LA ZOUCHE MYSTERY
  • Considering the outlandish wages paid, in a game of very little hardship, the least we should expect is entertainment, and not fumbling around like kids in the local park.
  • Fumbling for the switch, he brought the lamp off its perch.
  • The title couldn't be more fitting: As the U.S. film market changes right alongside the economy, film buyers and sellers alike are fumbling to redefine how films are bought, sold and distributed. Cannes Film Festival Highlights
  • Kel, after the obligatory fumblings and experimentation that nearly everyone goes through, had decided that on the whole, he preferred women.
  • As he felt Joe begin fumbling with his trousers Michael stifled an urge to slam his fist into Joe's head.
  • We teach adolescent kids the ways of love, sparing them years of awkward fumblings.
  • Why shave after you get home to the pitch black cabin and repeat the fumbling around?
  • So much for greater cultural understanding when you're fumbling around with your Berlitz phrasebook while gesticulating wildly at your intended interlocutor.
  • He is used primarily as a blocker, but be is adept at getting open, catching the ball and not fumbling.
  • He set them on the drainboard and began a loud and clumsy fumbling through the cupboard, obviously in hopes of provoking help. Sick Cycle Carousel
  • Sometimes it can be painful to watch former superstars fumbling for their lost skills like a punch-drunk boxer.
  • All that lip-wrestling in the conference room, footsie in the canteen and fumbling in the office toilets is coming back to haunt workers in the UK.
  • I was fumbling around, as the audience murmured in disbelief. Times, Sunday Times
  • Instantaneously alert, Joscelin rolled out of bed and onto his feet, mother-naked, fumbling for a weapon. Kushiel's Avatar
  • It was fun because he kept fumbling over his words and finally, when he gathered his composure, invited me to a party and gave me a flyer.
  • James asked, his speech fumbling over the words carefully.
  • Mr. Jensen describes how his sailors feel cumbrous and fumbling when on land, and the same is somewhat the case for the book. Going to Sea Once More
  • Why shave after you get home to the pitch black cabin and repeat the fumbling around?
  • his fumbling attempt to put up a shelf
  • His hands shake constantly; throw in his current addictions to coffee and cigars and you get transport that is, at best, fumbling and herky-jerky, at worst, upside down in a ditch, surrounded by flashing lights.
  • It took her a couple of minutes of fumbling around on her bedside table that was strewn with books to find the small mobile phone.
  • With fumbling fingers, I slowly took my change from her gentle flour-dusted palms and prayed that she was just a little podgy and not pregnant, catching her eye for another one of those smiles as I jangled out of the door.
  • He could see her fumbling around for her purse and muttering to herself furiously through the spidery, cracked windshield as he and the stranger rounded the car to survey the damage.
  • The fumbling gets more intense and nails are traced up my spine, fingers tickle along my neck and she slips her hand into my hair and holds my head tightly.
  • I was fumbling around, as the audience murmured in disbelief. Times, Sunday Times
  • After returning from the airport, having said goodbye, I sat on the verandah and looked out at the night, fumbling a cigarette, its fire the only bright spot.
  • They remember the sharp fear of unwanted pregnancies, and the fumblings in the dark with the woefully inadequate contraceptives that preceded it.
  • Almost every scene is suffused with an aesthetic that captures the all too familiar feeling of pubescent gracelessness, be it in the close-ups of lips smacking in the throws of burgermunching or the awkward fumblings of sofa sex.
  • A quick pat of the pockets and a bit of fumbling produced the card.
  • Mr. Belmore presented the radiantly clean and peaceful aspect of the man who has risen at nine o'clock instead of the customary seven, and bathed and dressed in the sweet unhurried calm that belongs only to the first day of the week, poking dilatorily among chiffonier drawers, discovering hitherto forgotten garments in his closet, and leisurely fumbling over a change of shirt-studs before coming down to consume the breakfast kept waiting for him. The Happiest Time
  • The charge related to a ‘fairly minor incident’ involving some fumbling over the girls' clothes, according to sources.
  • I did feel like quite the fumbling fool in that class.
  • And they had proper sex, not just fumbling under duvets.
  • So, based on my own stumbling, fumbling experience, I offer the following list of things I would strongly advise aspiring and despairing writers not to do.
  • It's bad enough to be reduced to fumbling around without electricity at any time. The Sun
  • Amid the yellow there is an extended white lump which moves under my fumbling fingers like a pea; like a ghostly, hard varicose vein. Times, Sunday Times
  • Robben's shot was powerful enough, but he could not have expected it to slip through Isaksson's fumbling hands, after which the ball bounced against the base of the post.
  • That sounds quaint today but our grandkids will laugh at the idea of fumbling around for a remote control. The Sun
  • The first album came from confused young men in their late teenage years who were fumbling around in the dark for a career and a girlfriend.
  • Then it was gone, the approaching trees, Maxine's fumbling hands, her curses: all of it erased. COLDHEART CANYON
  • Most of us have experienced a temporary loss of electricity and know the helpless feeling of fumbling around for a flashlight or matches and candles.
  • After an hour or so I was ready to connect again and started the long fumbling progress toward establishing reliable web working and email.
  • Clumsily fumbling around in his personal possessions with fingers which had fallen half-asleep, the emissary produced a neatly rolled-up paper and handed it over to the scaly hand before him.
  • Harry was fumbling with her bodice but unable to manage the laces, changed his mind, and decided to lead her in a disorderly pavane instead, smudging the wet paint of the new flats as he went. Exit the Actress
  • Even now, nobody really understands why the glow of celebrity, so swiftly dimmed on the brows of the other likely lackwits, stayed with the couple whose incompetent, fumbling romance entrapped a nation's heart.
  • He's reverted to his pre-convention state of fumbling and foundering and flummoxing and falling into a fevered form of flabbergast. Will Durst: Old Piranha Pants
  • This newfound power decreases the chances of Plummer throwing an interception at the goal line or fumbling the ball at the worst possible moment.
  • Yet we are so busy fumbling with boarding cards and bonkbusters that there's barely time to register such information.
  • Fumbling for string and for notes the instrument could not yield up to him, the birdlike mouth began once more to open widely and terribly into the orificial O. Humoresque A Laugh on Life with a Tear Behind It
  • Many critics have denounced what they describe as the fumbling of the case against former president Moshe Katsav by Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz. JPost Headlines
  • What is available is a videotape of the guru clumsily trying to produce a necklace for a politician at a public event, fumbling about under a trophy he is carrying, and almost dropping the ‘apport’ in a really sloppy performance.
  • Though he had been in the league two years, he was banished to the bench his second year for fumbling.
  • There were skirmishes, flirtations and drunken fumblings all the way up the east coast, but never the right person or the right time.
  • Here are three fumbling attempts at an answer. Christianity Today
  • Rena walked towards it, fumbling on the way due to cramps in her thigh muscles.

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