Other forms: fumbles, fumbled, fumbling
To fumble is to handle something clumsily and nearly drop it. Cold hands, and keys that will not go in the lock.
It takes with or for, so fumbling with a zip and fumbling for change are both standard. The word suggests haste and nerves as much as clumsiness. Sport uses it precisely, since a fumbled catch is dropped. There is a verbal sense too, since fumbling for words means struggling to find them, and it is one of the kindest ways of describing somebody floundering.
Dutch
fommelen
Low German
fummeln
English, today
fumble
From late Middle English -, from Low German fummeln, fommeln, fammeln (German fummeln), or Dutch fommelen. Or, perhaps from a Scandinavian/gmq - source; compare related Old Norse fálma, Icelandic fálma, Danish fumle, especially Swedish fumla, famla, with variants: fumbla (“fumble”), fambla (“famble”), related to Swedish fim, fem (Danish fim, Norwegian fim, feima), with a root meaning of “cover, coating of foam or figuratively ditto”, cognate to German Feim (“surf”) and English foam. Possibly has (a more or less unconscious) connection to fathom (via Old Norse faðmr, Swedish famn) in the sense of “embrace”. The ultimate origin for either could perhaps be imitative of the sound of fumbling. Or, from Proto-Indo-European pal- (“to shake, swing”), see also Latin palpo (“to pat, touch softly”), and possibly Proto-West Germanic fōlijan (“to feel”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word