Word.ws English Dictionary

stumbled across

stumbled across is the simple past and past participle of stumble across.

Meaning of stumble across

Verb

stumble across (third-person singular simple present stumbles across, present participle stumbling across, simple past and past participle stumbled across)

  1. (transitive) To discover or find (something) by accident.
    • This magnificent picture really stopped me in my tracks when I stumbled across it. I was drawn inexorably and immediately into the compelling detail discernible on this top-quality image.2021 December 1, Nigel Harris, “St Pancras and King's Cross: 1947”, in RAIL, number 945, page 36
  2. (transitive) To meet (somebody) by chance.

Questions about stumbled across

What is stumbled across the simple past and past participle of?
Stumbled across is the simple past and past participle of stumble across.

Words near stumbled across in the dictionary

  1. stumble-drunk
  2. stumble-drunks
  3. stumblebum
  4. stumblebums
  5. stumbled
  6. stumbled across
  7. stumbled against
  8. stumbled into
  9. stumbled on
  10. stumbled onto
  11. stumbled upon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stumbled across (page history and authors); stumble across (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: “stumbled across.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stumbled_across. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.