Word.ws English Dictionary

stumbling upon

stumbling upon is the present participle and gerund of stumble upon.

Meaning of stumble upon

Verb

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

  1. (figuratively) To discover or find something by accident.
    • Underneath a black cliff where the incoming tide smashed on the shingle, they stumbled upon the mail hood of Hrothgar's murdered vassal.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 35
  2. (figuratively) To meet somebody by chance.

Questions about stumbling upon

What is stumbling upon the present participle and gerund of?
Stumbling upon is the present participle and gerund of stumble upon.

Words near stumbling upon in the dictionary

  1. stumbling on
  2. stumbling onto
  3. stumbling stock
  4. stumbling stone
  5. stumbling stones
  6. stumbling upon
  7. stumbling-block
  8. stumbling-blocks
  9. stumbling-stone
  10. stumbling-stones
  11. stumblingblock

Source and license

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