Fumble vs Rummage - What's the difference?
fumble | rummage |
(intransitive) To idly touch or nervously handle
* {{quote-news
, year=2010
, date=December 28
, author=Owen Phillips
, title=Sunderland 0 - 2 Blackpool
, work=BBC
(intransitive) To grope awkwardly in trying to find something
* Fielding
To blunder uncertainly.
To grope about in perplexity; to seek awkwardly.
* Chesterfield
* Wordsworth
(transitive, intransitive, sports) To drop a ball or a baton etc.
To handle much; to play childishly; to turn over and over.
* Shakespeare
(nautical) To arrange (cargo, goods, etc.) in the hold of a ship; to move or rearrange such goods.
(nautical) To search a vessel for smuggled goods.
To search something thoroughly and with disregard for the way in which things were arranged.
* Howell
* (Matthew Arnold) (1822-1888)
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington
, title= To hastily search for something in a confined space and among many items by carelessly turning things over or pushing things aside.
* , chapter=8
, title= (obsolete) Commotion; disturbance.
A thorough search, usually resulting in disorder.
* Walpole
An unorganized collection of miscellaneous objects; a jumble.
(nautical) A place or room for the stowage of cargo in a ship; also, the act of stowing cargo; the pulling and moving about of packages incident to close stowage; formerly written romage .
In intransitive terms the difference between fumble and rummage
is that fumble is to blunder uncertainly while rummage is to hastily search for something in a confined space and among many items by carelessly turning things over or pushing things aside.As verbs the difference between fumble and rummage
is that fumble is to idly touch or nervously handle while rummage is to arrange (cargo, goods, etc.) in the hold of a ship; to move or rearrange such goods.As nouns the difference between fumble and rummage
is that fumble is a ball etc. that has been dropped while rummage is commotion; disturbance.fumble
English
Verb
(fumbl)- Waiting for the interview, he fumbled with his tie.
- He fumbled the key into the lock.
citation, page= , passage=Henderson's best strike on goal saw goalkeeper Kingson uncomfortably fumble his measured shot around the post.}}
- He fumbled for his keys.
- He fumbled his way to the light-switch.
- Adams now began to fumble in his pockets.
- He fumbled through his prepared speech.
- to fumble for an excuse
- My understanding flutters and my memory fumbles .
- Alas! how he fumbles about the domains.
- I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers.
rummage
English
Verb
(rummag)- Hesearcheth his pockets, and taketh his keys, and so rummageth all his closets and trunks.
- What schoolboy of us has not rummaged his Greek dictionary in vain for a satisfactory account!
Keeping the mighty honest, passage=British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.}}
Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=Philander went into the next room
Noun
(en noun)- He has such a general rummage and reform in the office of matrimony.
Quotations
''"And this, I take it,- Horatio, in "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare, act 1 scene 1 l 103-106
''Is the main motive of our preparations
''The source of this our watch, and the chief head
Of this post-haste and rummage in the land."