Word.ws English Dictionary

mumble-bee

/ˈmʌmbl̩bi/

mumble-bee noun: a kind of small trawling vessel.

Noun

mumble-bee (plural mumble-bees)

  1. (Devon, historical) A kind of small trawling vessel.

Forms of mumble-bee

pluralmumble-bees

Origin of mumble-bee

Origin uncertain; apparently an alteration of bumblebee. According to Wilfrid Granville (A Dictionary of Sailors’ Slang, 1962), “they were modelled on the oyster-fishing boats of the Mumbles district near Swansea”.

Questions about mumble-bee

What does mumble-bee mean?
Mumble-bee means a kind of small trawling vessel.
What part of speech is mumble-bee?
Mumble-bee is a noun.
How do you pronounce mumble-bee?
Mumble-bee is pronounced /ˈmʌmbl̩bi/.
What is the plural of mumble-bee?
The plural of mumble-bee is mumble-bees.

Words near mumble-bee in the dictionary

  1. Mumbannar
  2. Mumbil
  3. mumblage
  4. mumble
  5. mumble rap
  6. mumble-bee
  7. mumble-bees
  8. mumble-matins
  9. mumble-the-peg
  10. Mumblebone Plain
  11. mumblecore

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mumble-bee (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “mumble-bee.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mumble-bee. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.