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Bumble   /bˈəmbəl/   Listen
Bumble

verb
1.
Make a mess of, destroy or ruin.  Synonyms: ball up, blow, bobble, bodge, bollix, bollix up, bollocks, bollocks up, botch, botch up, bungle, flub, fluff, foul up, fuck up, fumble, louse up, mess up, mishandle, muck up, muff, screw up, spoil.  "The pianist screwed up the difficult passage in the second movement"
2.
Walk unsteadily.  Synonyms: falter, stumble.
3.
Speak haltingly.  Synonyms: falter, stammer, stutter.



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"Bumble" Quotes from Famous Books



... now master of the situation, and he directed ten thousand bees under General Bumble, and another ten thousand wasps under Colonel Hornet, to fall on the robber and cruel Sigli and sting them to death. But this was hardly necessary, as the wriggling of their bodies so fixed them to the figure that they ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others

... certainly have most outspoken cousins! They don't seem to hesitate to tell me what to bring and what not to bring them. But I'm sure of one thing! Bumble Barlow won't be so fussy particular; she'll take whatever I ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... mysteriously affected by her indignation the absurd Fyne dog began to bark in the porch. It might have been at a trespassing bumble-bee however. That animal was capable of any eccentricity. Fyne got up quickly and went out to him. I think he was glad to leave us alone to discuss that matter of his journey to London. A sort of anti-sentimental journey. He, too, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... in the garden seemed to be an endless source of pleasure to the girl; she would sit for hours looking at the pale lilac-tinted wistaria clusters hanging over the naked wall and watching plundering bumble-bees ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... day a jolly bumble-bee, In coat of black and yellow, Got caught inside a window-pane; The silly ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous

... power and brain power," she said; "you must utilize them, or be content to remain forever the inferior race. Get land, every one that can, and as fast as you ean. A landless people must be dependent upon the landed people. A few acres to till for food and a roof, however bumble, over your head, are the castle of your independence, and when you have it you are fortified to act and vote independently whenever your interests are at stake." That part of her lecture (and there was ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... the mosquitoes before another season arrived. He thought of the big Bumble Bees back home and sent for several yoke of them. These, he hoped would destroy the mosquitoes. Sourdough Sam brought out two pair of bees, overland on foot. There was no other way to travel for the flight of the beasts could not be controlled. Their wings were strapped with surcingles, ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead

... silently watched awhile. A timid animal world had come to life for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the sound of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... lad dropped on hands and toes and ran along like a dog, thus far untouched by bullets, though they were thick as a nest of liberated bumble bees about ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... little astonishment, Benassis beheld Genestas pacing to and fro in the salon, like a bumble-bee in quest of an exit from the room which he has ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... as he parted the rings of her hair from her low brow. 'I don't know whether I am crazy or not They say so, and perhaps I am, when my head is full of bumble-bees.' ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... Wesleyan minister came along and took the younger boy. She is alone in the house. A steamer, probably bound for Cardiff, now crosses the horizon, while near at hand one bell of a foxglove swings to and fro with a bumble-bee for clapper. These white Cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff; the garden grows gorse more readily than cabbages; and for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders. In one of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... dub! One shoe on the Tubb! Where can the other one be? Look in your bunk And look in your trunk, And look in the bumble-bee tree!" ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield

... laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it was an event of magnitude; a peasant sharpening his scythe, a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the boom of a bumble-bee, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they kept, invited the dewy-feathered sleep that visited him, and held him for the best part of ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... patience to bring the Tarantula who has bitten into the insidious spikelet to the entrance of the burrow. The following method is quicker: I procure a supply of live Bumble-bees. I put one into a little bottle with a mouth just wide enough to cover the opening of the burrow; and I turn the apparatus thus baited over the said opening. The powerful Bee at first flutters and hums about her glass prison; then, perceiving ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... firs and pines, as shiny as metal, and so motionless that the drops which still hung here and there on their needles seemed frozen. Everything was motionless under this yellow light, the grass-blades, the moss-blossoms, and the little blue butterflies, and a bumble-bee crawled into the bell of a bennet and hung there as if enchanted. In the thicket a fox drew near, his head lowered to sniff the ground, and suddenly he too stood still without stirring a muscle and stared into space, his eyes transparent as green glass, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... the pantry hastily devouring onions and beefsteak. To be hungry is so vulgar! One should live by nothing grosser than inhalation, and should never have an appetite greater than that of a healthy bumble-bee. But, thanks to the robust, latter-day theory, that the best saints have the best bodies, this puerile class is diminishing. For who can doubt that the senses are entitled to their full blossom? Gustation was meant to be delightful; and cooking is certainly half as good as tasting. At times one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... these plants, for goldfinches were darting around inviting all creation to "See me?" as they gathered the silken down for nest lining. Over the sweetly perfumed purple heads, the humming-birds held high carnival on Sunshine Hillside all the day. The honey and bumble bees fled at the birds' approach, but what were these others, numerous everywhere, that clung to the blooms, greedily thrusting their red noses between the petals, and ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... day she worked; no lover lent His aid; and yet with glee At dusk she sought her home, content, That beauteous Bumble Bee. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... encroaches on its domain, and is drawn to its silken vortex, and is eventually shed below as a clean dried specimen; for this is an agalena spider, which dispenses with the winding-sheet of the field species—epeira and argiope. Last week a big bumble-bee-like fly paid me a visit and suddenly disappeared. To-day I find him dried and ready for the insect-pin and the cabinet on the window-sill beneath the web, which affords at all times its liberal entomological assortment—Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... but to look so. Give us the benefit of your two eyes. There is one of the elders whose eyes I have never caught while speaking, save once, and that was when I was preaching from Psalm cxiii. 12, 'They compassed me about like bees,' and by a strange coincidence a bumble-bee got into church, and I had my attention divided between my text and the annoying insect, which flew about like an illustration I could not catch. A dull Pew is often responsible for a dull Pulpit. Do not put your ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... so. The boys found a bumble bees' nest and Tubby didn't have any paddle to hit them with. So they all went for poor Tubby and they stung him so that his face is twice as big as usual—so ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... restore the hive, especially the stings. Indeed, some schemes of labor and Poor Law reform recently advanced by distinguished Socialists, amount to little more than putting the largest number of people in the despotic power of Mr. Bumble. Apparently, progress means being moved ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... like sparks of fire. Not only did he see and feel, he could even hear it now: his ears were filled with a humming sound, growing louder and louder every minute, like the noise made by a large colony of bumble-bees when a person carelessly treads on their nest, and they are angered and thrown into a great commotion and swarm out to defend their home. Very soon out of this confused murmur louder, clearer sounds began to rise; and these could be distinguished as the notes ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.

... the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing quilts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... fullness to everything it contained, that he did not care to credit himself with the marvel of having yet so early anticipated so much. But the first sprightly runnings of his genius are undoubtedly here. Mr. Bumble is in the parish sketches, and Mr. Dawkins the dodger in the Old Bailey scenes. There is laughter and fun to excess, never misapplied; there are the minute points and shades of character, with ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... "Troth, Nippi-Bumble, he's about right," added Briant coaxingly. "Come now, avic, wot's the raisin ye won't go? Sure we ain't blackguards enough to ax ye to come for to be sold; it's all fair and above ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... crowd of people, among them many women, and even little children, flocked into the building in a very short time, thronged about the bier, the black table, and Panna, who was leaning against it, carrying on a low, eager hum of conversation till it seemed as though countless swarms of bumble-bees ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... a mere code address, and I use it here symbolically. I have seen commerce pretty close. I know what it is worth, and I have no particular regard for commercial magnates, but one must protest against these Bumble-like proceedings. Is it indignation at the loss of so many lives which is at work here? Well, the American railroads kill very many people during one single year, I dare say. Then why don't these dignitaries come down on the presidents of their own railroads, of which one can't say whether ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. —The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,— "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,— "There is your p'int. And here's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... very nicely so far without one. Did I have one on the Miele? And yet I was the only woman on board. There are only three things I am afraid of—bumble-bees, scarlet fever, and chaperones. Ugh! the clucking, evil-minded monsters, finding wrong in everything, seeing sin in the most innocent actions, and suggesting sin—yes, causing sin—by their ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... his sight,—even the little rose in old Josey Letherbarrow's smock caught his eye with an almost obtrusive flare. The blithe soft carol of the birds outside sounded close and loud,— the buzzing of a bumble-bee that had found its way into the church and was now bouncing fussily against a sunlit window, in its efforts to pass through what seemed to itself clear space, made quite an abnormal noise. His heart beat heavily,—he fancied he could hear it thudding in his breast,—then, all at once, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... Man's Cave, 'cause a skellington was found there," observed the child as they passed a dark, yawning mouth in the cliff. "And that's Bumble Cave, 'cause the bumblebees make nests in the top of it. And here's Smuggler's Cave, 'cause the smugglers used to hide ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum

... I may remark, is accounts of mountaineering exploits, though I have never seen a glacier or a permanent snow mountain in my life. I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and composition is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on one side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl up an arete with a precipice on either. Nothing on earth would persuade me to do either ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... business. Never showed himself at all. Just opened fire. Sent a bullet through the top of my hat. He's either a damn good shot or a damn poor one. I hung up both hands and yelled we was down and out. What could I do? This outfit couldn't a fit a bumble bee. And I couldn't git away, or git hold of no gun, or see anything to shoot, if I did. He ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... boys and girls who live in the country, and probably a large share of those who live in the city, know the bumble-bee. We had a little different name for him in our neighborhood. Bumble-bee was, however, the only name the family was known by, in Willow Lane, and I think it quite possible that such a corruption, (if it is a corruption, and the wise ones tell us it is, though I should ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank

... Hall by fire, in 1599, of certain works purporting to be poetical; such works, namely, as Marlowe's Elegies of Ovid, which appeared in company with Davies's Epigrammes, Marston's Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image, Hall's Satires, and Cutwode's Caltha Poetarum; or, The Bumble Bee. The latter is a fantastic poem of 187 stanzas about a bee and a marigold, and deserved the fire rather for its insipidity than for the reasons which justified the cleansing process applied to the others, the youthful productions of men who were ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... his chair he closed his eyes. Some thistle-down came on what little air there was, and pitched on his moustache more white than itself. He did not know; but his breathing stirred it, caught there. A ray of sunlight struck through and lodged on his boot. A bumble-bee alighted and strolled on the crown of his Panama hat. And the delicious surge of slumber reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward and rested on his breast. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... field mice and the frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes. Also with the wild bees and wasps. One season I made a collection of bumblebee honey, studying the habits of five or six different kinds and rifling their nests. I kept my store of bumble-bee honey in the attic where I had a small box full of the comb and a large phial filled with the honey. How well I came to know the different dispositions of the various kinds—the small red-vested that made its nest in ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... wondering did not help him, and he gave up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went sloping down ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... most of them were orchids, several of which were new to him. The air of the place was heavy with mingled odours—one might almost have called them perfumes, were it not for a certain smack of rankness and pungency in them—and alive with birds, varying in size from that of a bumble bee up to that of a carrion crow, a few specimens of which could be seen perched here and there on the topmost branches of the tallest trees. Several of the birds were of the humming bird or sunbird species, and these, of course, gleamed and flashed in the sunlight ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... instances of what was expected of him; and his thick voice drowsed in the still air like the obstinate droning of an enormous bumble-bee. Captain Whalley did not know what was the force or the weakness that prevented him from saying good-night and walking away. It was as though he had been too tired to make the effort. How queer. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... into this folly was a bumble of the utmost beauty. The bars of his coat "burned" as "brightly" as those of the tiger in Wombwell's menagerie, and his fur was softer than my mother's black velvet mantle. I knew, for I had kissed him lightly as he sat on the window-frame. I had seen him brushing first one side and then the other ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... yellow as gold, Sat perched on a red-clover top, When a grasshopper, wiry and old, Came along with a skip and a hop. "Good-morrow!" cried he, "Mr. Bumble-Bee! You seem to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... "phen-dubs" means? I can. Can you say all off by heart The "onery twoery ickery ann," Or tell "alleys" and "commons" apart? Can you fling a top, I would like to know, Till it hums like a bumble-bee? Can you make a kite yourself that will go 'Most as high as the eye can see, Till it sails and soars like a hawk on the wing, And the little birds come and light on ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... Council, are you one? 'Tis said you're but a Bumble-batch! Beware the Jobjob Bird, and shun ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various

... meadow, without shaking the boggy ground. He had a trick with a detachable float, made from a quill and a tiny piece of cork, that brought him many a fish from the centre of a mill-pond. He knew the best baits for every season,—worms, white grubs, striped minnows, miller's thumbs, bumble-bees, grasshoppers, young field-mice,—and he knew where ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... Hurly-Burly,' so you may prepare yourself to see a family that lives up to that name. But there is plenty of amusement, if you are fond of boating and bathing, and we will all welcome you with open arms and glad hearts; and the sooner you come, the better we shall like it. Your cousins, Bob and Bumble are very anxious to see you, and are making wonderful plans for your entertainment. So come as soon as you can, and if you will let us know at what hour to expect you, Uncle Theodore will meet you at ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... thick lips together like the stem-end of a tomato and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away. One after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice and delivered it at the deceased with steady, aim ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... under leaf and flower, Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art; The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour, Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of the birds,—like August there,— Beneath a beech, dripping from ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... Lizard is rendered doubly perilous by a sea-covered stack of rocks lying to the southward. Before oil was introduced for the lamps it is said the lantern was lit by coal-fires—a kind of first-hand use of gas. Below the lighthouse is the striking Bumble Rock, and close to this the hollow known as the Lion's Den, formed by a natural sudden subsidence in 1847. This formation was an immediate object-lesson as to the manner in which these remarkable hollows, caverns, and rock-freaks have been produced in the course of time; and there can be no doubt ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... a bumble-bee was beating itself against the window-pane and buzzing. Sofya Petrovna looked at the threads on the socks, listened to the bee, and pictured how she would set off . . . . vis-a-vis Ilyin would sit, day and night, never taking his eyes off her, wrathful at his own weakness and pale with spiritual ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... nothing did happen, but there was no knowing what joyful day might bring a new sensation. Sometimes there was a dog-fight. Once—thrilling recollection!—Ozias Brisket's horse had run away ("Think 't 's likely a bumble-bee must ha' stung him; couldn't nothin' else ha' stirred him out of a walk, haw! haw!") and had scattered the joints of meat all about ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards

... matter where. This is an excellent method on her part, because of the variety of the game that comes her way. I see her accepting with equal readiness whatever chance may send her: Butterflies and Dragon-flies, Flies and Wasps, small Dung-beetles and Locusts. If I offer her a Mantis, a Bumble-bee, an Anoxia—the equivalent of the common Cockchafer—and other dishes probably unknown to her race, she accepts all and any, large and small, thin-skinned and horny-skinned, that which goes afoot and that which takes winged flight. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... one of his guardians writes to me about him. He is a country gentleman, with a large estate, who married a cousin of my pupil. He is a big, pompous, bumble-bee kind of man, who prides himself on speaking his mind, and is quite unaware that it is only his position that saves him from the plainest retorts. He writes to say that he is much exercised about his ward's progress. The boy, he says, is fanciful and delicate, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... can see Rooks above the cherry-tree, Sparrows in the violet bed, Bramble-bush and bumble-bee, And old red bracken smoulders still Among boulders on the hill, Far too bright ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves

... that he was "an example to his order," and yet better than this stately panegyric is the happy accident, if it be one, that the poor flower girls of London have pitched their camp upon the steps, and have successfully defied all the efforts of Mr. Bumble to ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge

... "But, bumble-bee, Your gauzy wings, It seems to me, Are flimsy things; Should they get drenched, 'twould spoil them quite, And you'd be ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... afar Where the Little People are; Where the clover-tops are trees, And the rain-pools are the seas, And the leaves like little ships Sail about on tiny trips; And above the daisy tree Through the grasses, High o'erhead the Bumble Bee Hums and passes. In that forest to and fro I can wander, I can go; See the spider and the fly, And the ants go marching by Carrying parcels with their feet Down the green and grassy street I can in ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... saw the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery chant, ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley

... you see, he started with a fly, as they say, and now it's grown to a bumble-bee. It was a fly then, and now—it's a bumble-bee.... And he still loves her. Look at him, he loves her! I expect he's walking now to the town to get a glimpse of her with one eye.... He'll get a glimpse of her, ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... 5: An urchin puts a bumble-bee in his pistol pocket and goes fishing. He sits down, the bee turns the trick, and ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin

... which developed a hornets' nest of sharpshooters armed with telescopic rifles, who could pick a man's ear off half-a-mile away. The bullets from their guns had a peculiar sound, something like the buzz of a bumble-bee, and the troopers' horses would stop, prick up their ears and gaze in the direction whence the hum of those invisible messengers could be heard. Unable to reach them mounted, we finally deployed dismounted along a staked ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... quiet and restful are the silent, scented, spreading fields! How soothing to a spirit tired of the city's din is this solitude, broken only by the singing of the birds and the drowsy droning of the bee, erroneously termed 'bumble'! The green fields, the shady trees, the sweet freshness of the summer air, untainted by city smoke, and over all the eternal serenity of the blue unclouded sky—how can human spite and human passion exist in such a paradise? Does it all not make you feel as if you were an innocent ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... folkses' back yard. Us had a white teacher and all he larnt slave chillun was jus' plain readin' and writin'. I had to pass Dr. Willingham's office lots and he was all de time pesterin' me 'bout spellin'. One day he stopped me and axed me if I could spell 'bumble bee widout its tail,' and he said dat when I larnt to spell it, he would gimme some candy. Mr. Sanders, at Lexin'ton, gimme a dime onct. It was de fust money I ever had. I was plumb rich and I never let my Daddy have no peace 'til he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... are some parties in this place who employ very queer legal advisers; and in shaking hands, a file or a gimlet, and a bit of tobacco, are as likely to pass as not. That warder can see every thing, my dear young Sir; but he can no more hear what we say than he can understand what a couple of bumble-bees are murmuring about who are barred up in a double window. We can therefore converse with one another as much without reserve as we please, or rather"—and here the little man's eyes twinkled significantly—"as ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... big as all out-of-doors, and e'en BUMBLE was hardly as bumptious. He'd make my London a Paradise, which is a prospect that's perfectly scrumptious. But oh! he is big, with the funniest rig; a Titan who, if he should tumble, Might squelch me as flat as an opera-hat, and make me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various

... happened. Even the chinless curate, whose voice without consonants gave the effect of an intoning bumble-bee, never took advantage of her suggestions (frequently repeated) that he should drop ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... what I started to say. I wanted to tell you how the least thing distracts me nowadays from my duty to the Sadhana. In my last letter[1] I told you of the bumble-bees which hover round me in some fruitless quest, to the tune of a meaningless humming, with ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... The bumble-bee that tipped the lily-vases Along the road-side in the shadows dim, Went following the blossoms of their faces As though their sweets must needs be ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... that, however much the carters lashed and swore at them, the animals would not budge an inch until she permitted them to go. Here are a few of the common superstitions current in Berkshire. If a corpse be kept over a Sunday another death will occur before the week is out; should a big bumble-bee enter the window, a guest may be expected; and when the woodpecker, commonly called the yaffle, laughs, they say the rain is coming. When the thick mist lies in the valley, the people say it is the White Lady, a belief closely akin to the Dame Blanche, who is said in Normandy to haunt streams. ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... ain't fought out any bumble-bees' nest since the time you got one up your pant leg and pretty near pounded yourself to death with a ball bat," said Sim. "Can you still run as fast as the time Wert Payley and I dared you to ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch

... Mrs. Gummidge, Dickens draws types rather than characters. Pecksniff, Podsnap, Dolly Varden, Mr. Bumble, Mrs. Gamp, Mark Tapley, Turveydrop, Mrs. Jellyby—these are not characters; ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... inland were little patches of dwarf birch, scarcely a foot high, crouching close to the ground to escape being torn away by the furious winds that sweep over the land. There was none of the abundant life that we see around us in our fields and woods. A spider, a bumble-bee, and a poor little wanderer of a bird, were the only living things ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... bumble-bee, yellow as gold, Sat perched on a red-clover top, When a grasshopper, wiry and old, Came along with a skip and a hop. "Good-morrow!" cried he, "Mr. Bumble-Bee! You seem to have come ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... and plants. on the effects of slight differences of colour. on fertilisation of scarlet runner. on fossil maize in Peru. on fresh-water mollusks. on the bumble bee. on the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... Another bumble-bee went over along the tips of the wheat—burr-rr—as he passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital piece of wood to bite up into tiny pieces and make into ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... enameled wings for the girls and stick pins with bumble bees in black and gold for the boys. On the back of each pin was the date and Janet's ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill

... love spring, the most joyful season of the year? It is then that the spring bonnet of the workaday world crosses the earth's orbit and makes the bank account of the husband and father look fatigued. The low shoe and the low hum of the bumble-bee are again with us. The little striped hornet heats his nose with a spirit lamp and goes forth searching for the man with the linen pantaloons. All nature is full of life and activity. So is the man with the linen pantaloons. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... down over his comfortably bulging, unbuttoned waistcoat. The lazy day was in his blood and even the whine of the sawmills on the river-bank, a mile or more to the south, tempered as it was by the distance to the drone of a surly bumble-bee, still vaguely annoyed him. Tiny dots of men in flannel shirts of brilliant hue, flashing from time to time out across the log-choked space between the booms, caught his eye whenever he lifted his head, during the passage of a green-sprayed glass from the veranda rail to his lips, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... wrong, or to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny porch of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... a few lines in the press of business to tell you I am well, but very lonely, with a view out over the green, in this dull, rainy weather, while the bumble-bees hum and the sparrows twitter. Grand audience tomorrow. It's vexatious that I have to buy linen, towels, table-cloths, and sheets. * * * Farewell. Hearty love, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... when the explosion came. Branches and pieces of tree trunk were whirled upward, and the air became populated with deadly bumble bees and humming birds, for such is the sound that the shell splinters make. When I essayed our shell hole afterward, I couldn't fathom how five of us had managed to accommodate ourselves in it, but in the rush of necessity, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... thing. Whatever had been in Faith's speech, her look, bright, wistful, and happy, had no fear, truly bumble though it was. "There is no danger of my loving this letter too much"—she said as she carefully restored it to its envelope; said with a secret ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... second brood chattered in the old walnut trees far away on the lawn; thrushes sang their deep-throated bugle-calls; finches twittered. A light breeze creeping up the avenue rustled the full foliage languorously. Ursula Winwood closed her eyes. A bumble-bee droned between visits to foxglove bells near by. She loved bumble-bees. They reminded her of a summer long ago when she sat, not on this seat—as a matter of fact it was in the old walled garden a quarter of a mile away—with a gallant young fellow's ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... knelt, her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch. And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting excursions right and left. For half-way through the litany some belated worshipper arrived, causing movement in the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... broached the subject, being engaged in writing a story, he had removed but one-eighth of his mind for the consideration of mundane affairs, and that, as any one knows, is insufficient to judge fairly whether the winged thing I was reaching out for was a fly or a bumble bee. In the morning, the story being finished and the other seven-eights of brain at liberty to dwell upon the same question, he decided to follow me, with the result that in the afternoon I ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... I hear the old bumble-bee down alow yonder. Keep as still as mice, and stir not, nor ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... that flooded him with water and sent him off blowing the tide from his nostrils like a whale. Perhaps these things were permitted because the sight of the victim's suffering was so funny. Half the pleasure in fighting wasps or bumble-bees was in killing them and destroying their nests; the other half was in seeing the fellows get stung. If you could fool a fellow into a mass-meeting of bumble-bees, and see him lead them off in a steeple-chase, it was right and fair to do so. But there were other ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... question was in the handwriting of a fussy officious "bumble" friend of the wealthy man, who dwelt in the town of Covelly. It ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... abuses of his institutions been portrayed! How have the poor-house, the jail, the police courts of justice, passed before his magic mirror, and displayed to us the petty tyranny of the low-minded official, from the magnificent Mr. Bumble, and the hard-hearted Mr. Roker, to the authoritative Justice Fang, the positive Judge Starleigh! And as we contemplate them, how strongly have we realized the time-worn evils of some of the systems they revealed to our eyesight, sharpened to detect the deficiencies ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... work, work don't bother me. I'se fo' times as happy as a bumble bee. Us eats when us kin git it, sleeps mos' ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... claimed the whole discovery as his own, saying he was out on his own hook when the mine was located, which was a falsehood. But though Baxter claimed the mine he could not locate it, nor could I do so. It was along a creek which a certain Jack Wumble had called Bumble Bee, but we could not locate this creek, and Jack Wumble had departed for fresh fields. But I have located the old miner, and he has told me that Bumble Bee Creek was in reality one of the south branches ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... Where the dandelions dipped In crimson foam of clover-bloom, And dripped and dripped and dripped; And they clinched the bumble-stings, Gauming honey on their wings, And bundling them in lily-bells, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... occasional cirrus clouds overspread the sun, and for a while subdued his fierceness. We were all out on the piazza—as the coolest place we could find—my wife, my sister-in-law and I. The only sounds that broke the Sabbath stillness were the hum of an occasional vagrant bumble-bee, or the fragmentary song of a mocking-bird in a neighboring elm, who lazily trolled a stave of melody, now and then, as a sample of what he could do in the cool of the morning, or after a light shower, when the conditions would be ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... squirrels brought a present of wild honey; it was so sweet and sticky that they licked their fingers as they put it down upon the stone. They had stolen it out of a bumble BEES' nest on the tippity top ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... and the traps and pitfalls better even than I did, and ran us in up the wind with a steady hand till the roadstead opened before us. But it was empty. Torode was off after plunder, and we turned and ran for Peter Port. We found John Ozanne as busy as a big bumble-bee, but he made time to greet my grandfather very jovially, and showed him all over his little ship with much pride. He was in high spirits and anxious to be off, especially since he had heard ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... long feet, short feet, broad feet, splay feet, club feet, and bumble feet, to which may be added cloven feet in the case of certain animals, ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... Reddy couldn't think of a thing to say in reply, and so he hurried on, trying to find a place where he would be left in peace. But nowhere that he could go was he free from those taunting voices. Not even when he had crawled into his house was he free from them, for buzzing around his doorway was Bumble Bee and ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess

... that I wouldn't let you kiss me, won't you?" he answered as he drew back from the table and lit a cigarette after passing me the case. "Everybody calls me Buzz the Bumble Bee because of a historic encounter of mine with a whole nest of bumblebees right out here in the General's garden. It is a title of heroism and I'd like to have you use it as if we'd been kids together as we were slated to have been. Gee, I bet you could have beat the bees down some. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the side of a narrow brook for our dinner, and one incident of that meal I think of always when I think of Uncle Eb. It shows the manner of man he was and with what understanding and sympathy he regarded every living thing. In rinsing his teapot he accidentally poured a bit of water on a big bumble-bee. The poor creature struggled to lift hill, and then another downpour caught him and still another until his wings fell drenched. Then his breast began heaving violently, his legs stiffened behind him and he sank, head downward, in the grass. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... influenced by the example of those around them. Mrs. Howard led the traveller to speak of what he had seen in different countries—of natural history—of the beaver, and the moose-deer, and the humming-bird, that is scarcely larger than a bumble bee; and the mocking-bird, that can imitate the notes of all other birds. Charles niched himself into a corner of the sofa upon which the gentlemen were sitting, and grew very attentive. He was rather surprised to perceive that his tutor ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... at this season are hungry vagrants with no fixed place of abode, would gorge themselves, then creep beneath the bits of empty comb or fragments of bark and pass the night, and renew the feast next day. The bumble-bee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy compared with the honeybee. Attracted in the fields by the bee-hunter's box, they ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... discharged it thoroughly. The third club which this energetic man founded was not given up to eating and drinking, but devoted itself to the discussion of moral and artistic subjects. They called themselves "The Bumble-Bees," though I never could understand the reason why they chose such a name, unless it was, as Murray suggested, that after they had touched a thing there was no sweetness left in it. I should not like to say how many more clubs this man would have started had he ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... are! (Of course women are all alike!) While Osborne, like a good-natured bumble-bee, was buzzing noisily about, as though all the world were his clover-blossom; and Allen, so far as I know, was doing nothing; M. Godin, alert and keen despite his gentleness and a modesty which ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... them and their "statutes" and "digests"! "Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly jests. Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on that lay perniskers There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein' their wiskers, Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar—it's mighty obliging—defines 'em, The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties read Circ'lars as signs 'em, If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin', ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... toy theatre at Easton and among other things dramatized the minority report of the Poor Law Commission. The play began by the Commissioners taking to pieces Bumble the Beadle, putting him into a huge cauldron and stewing him. Then out from the cauldron leaped a renewed rejuvenated Bumble several sizes larger ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... fiddling out of a barn, With a pair of bagpipes under her arm; She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee, The mouse has married the bumble-bee. Pipe cat—dance, mouse, We'll have a ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... captured a whole family before they could escape. And to these were added frogs and toads, still partly somnambulent; many ants, curled up as if dead, in the heart of rotting logs; and occasional bumble-bees, wasps, and hornets. Now and then Neewa took a nibble at these things. On the third day Noozak uncovered a solid mass of hibernating vinegar ants as large as a man's two fists, and frozen solid. Neewa ate a quantity of these, and the sweet, vinegary ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... works of Persius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Claudianus. He also reprinted the Caltha Poetarum, or the Bumble Bee, of T. Cutwode, from the edition of 1599, for the Roxburghe Club, and assisted in the preparation of the third edition of Ellis's Specimens ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... sewing-machine began to hum through the old house like a cheerful bumble-bee, and Mag entered upon what was certainly the happiest period of her career. Laces, silks, fine muslins—these had the effect upon her developing soul that a virgin canvas has upon the painter. Her fingers ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... Perhaps no Freshman had ever gone through a more severe course of hoaxing - to survive it - than Mr. Verdant Green; and yet, by a system of retaliation, only paralleled by the quadrupedal case of the before-mentioned elephant, and the biped-beadle case of the illustrious Mr. Bumble, who after having his own ears boxed by the late Mrs. Corney, relieved his feelings by boxing the ears of the small boy who opened the gate for him, - our hero took the greatest delight in seeking every opportunity to play off upon a Freshman some ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... running the length of the ridge pole, and from half an inch to two inches deep! Every pack was black with them on the march, and the wagon carried its millions. When the shadow of a branch would cross that slowly lumbering vehicle, the swarm would rise and bumble around distractedly for a moment before settling down again. They fairly ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... none of our soldiers. This engagement we called the capture of fort "Hell." For some time thereafter we made regular raids into the surrounding country in quest of an enemy. We were eventually successful in our quest, as in quick order we ran across and captured a company of bumble bees. This we called the "Battle of the Wilderness." Victory over a nest of hornets we called the capture of "Fort Sumter." A large nest of wasps gave us perhaps the hardest fight of our campaigning. This we ran across in the fields not far from home. There was an unusually large ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love

... bumble-bee?] voice of the crowd below the windows watching Volney Sprague's bulletin suddenly lifted in a lion roar. Elation in that quarter was ominous, and Shelby drew a curtain. It appeared that a minor revolt ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... HANCOCK out. The Governor came with his Lighthorse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth, And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,— "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,— "There is your p'int. And here ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.



Words linked to "Bumble" :   talk, speak, mouth, verbalize, utter, walk, verbalise, go wrong, fail, miscarry



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