shambling


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Related to shambling: gait

sham·ble

 (shăm′bəl)
intr.v. sham·bled, sham·bling, sham·bles
To walk in an awkward, lazy, or unsteady manner, shuffling the feet.
n.
A shuffling gait.

[Probably from obsolete shamble, awkward, ungainly, from Middle English schamil, butcher's table; see shambles.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun1.shambling - walking with a slow dragging motion without lifting your feet; "from his shambling I assumed he was very old"
walk, walking - the act of traveling by foot; "walking is a healthy form of exercise"
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

shambling

adjective clumsy, awkward, shuffling, lurching, lumbering, unsteady, ungainly a small dark, shambling figure
Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002
References in classic literature ?
1-11) `There is a land Ellopia with much glebe and rich meadows, and rich in flocks and shambling kine.
A shuffling quick step on the path; a running grumble of unmistakable threats; a shambling moonlit figure seen in glimpses through the leaves, very near us for an instant, then hidden by the shrubbery as he passed within a few yards of our hiding-place.
He ran once, but the long gown clogged him so that he slowed down into a shambling walk, and finally plumped into the heather once more.
She passed on, walking with a curious, shambling gait, and soon she disappeared on her way to the village.
"'Show him round here.' An instant afterwards there appeared a little wizened fellow with a cringing manner and a shambling style of walking.
They were Chinese, with expressionless, Sphinx-like faces, and they walked in peculiar shambling fashion, dragging their feet as if the clumsy brogans were too heavy for their lean shanks.
The great head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weak and weaker.
Parson Tringham had spoken truly when he said that our shambling John Durbeyfield was the only really lineal representative of the old d'Urberville family existing in the county, or near it; he might have added, what he knew very well, that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles were no more d'Urbervilles of the true tree then he was himself.