How to Use bungle in a Sentence

bungle

verb
  • The government bungled badly in planning the campaign.
  • The pair wasn’t done with its bungling yet.
    — Bryan Hood, Robb Report, 5 Feb. 2026
  • Yes, some over-the-top bits are lost and missed or slightly bungled.
    — Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant, 3 Mar. 2024
  • Airlines seem to bungle the answer to this question again and again.
    — Jessica Puckett, Condé Nast Traveler, 22 July 2019
  • For now, the press still sometimes bungled his name as Harry.
    — Eric Moskowitz, The Atlantic, 31 May 2026
  • Hollywood stars would do well to worry less about bungling the teleprompter and more about being true to their heart.
    — Steven Zeitchik, HollywoodReporter, 5 Feb. 2026
  • Plus, there's a higher chance that snow and ice could bungle flight operations.
    — Jessica Puckett, Condé Nast Traveler, 15 Dec. 2023
  • These are times the team put themselves in a position to pick up one point — and sometimes two — and bungled it.
    — Peter Baugh, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2025
  • He is said to forget key facts, bungle media interviews and drift off in meetings.
    — The Economist, 8 Aug. 2019
  • Just about every detail of the plan was ill conceived and would be grotesquely bungled in practice.
    — Town & Country, 14 Nov. 2022
  • Other members of the board wanted to make sure the state didn’t bungle the reopening.
    — Kiera Feldman, Los Angeles Times, 20 May 2021
  • The trio also proved pivotal to the film's plot, bungling two attempts to kill off lion cub Simba.
    — Bryan Alexander, USA TODAY, 23 Nov. 2018
  • At the Guthrie, the bauble is bungled, and takes on the second-hand sheen of costume jewelry.
    — Dominic P. Papatola, Twin Cities, 7 Feb. 2017
  • The Cavs had the right approach for this matchup, but bungled a few too many of their defensive exchanges.
    — Rob Mahoney, SI.com, 1 June 2018
  • The tenor Rodell Rosel brought verve and flair to the malicious yet bungling Monostatos.
    — New York Times, 16 Dec. 2019
  • Indeed, the offseason still could turn out to be a failure if the team bungles the next several months.
    — Josh Robbins, OrlandoSentinel.com, 1 June 2018
  • George Springer, who had bungled a sinking liner in the top of the inning, crushed a flat first-pitch sinker to left to lead off.
    — Jack Dickey, SI.com, 30 Oct. 2017
  • The state hasn't carried out an execution in more than three years, and its last two lethal injections were bungled.
    — Tracy Connor, NBC News, 14 Mar. 2018
  • Local 41 also is accused of bungling the voting process itself.
    — Allison Kite and Mark Davis, kansascity, 21 May 2018
  • But this year’s Academy Awards felt more like an effort to just get through the night without bungling one more thing.
    — Ben Fritz, WSJ, 25 Feb. 2019
  • Starting quarterbacks are the Jenga piece that can’t be bungled, and only so many come ready-made.
    — Jonas Shaffer, baltimoresun.com, 20 Sep. 2019
  • Yet cops and doctors still bungled the follow-up and compounded the survivor’s distress.
    — Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2025
  • The Jets bungled five fourth quarter leads and lost, often with Rodgers, ball in his hands late in the game with a chance to win it.
    — Zack Rosenblatt, The Athletic, 9 Jan. 2025
  • The Chiefs bungled it in more ways than one, more than that fourth-down call, even if the most glaring is the decision to settle for three.
    — Sam McDowell 4, Kansas City Star, 4 Nov. 2025
  • In the movie, hit man Shane Stant bungles his way through the attack, breaking a locked glass door with his head to escape and drive off.
    — Sarah Caldwell, Cosmopolitan, 17 Jan. 2018
  • If any of that is true, this whole thing is a house of cards, and the Dolphins badly bungled the quarterback position.
    — Chris Perkins, Sun Sentinel, 27 Sep. 2024
  • One day, calling kids up to get pizza for a class lunch, the teacher repeatedly and purposely bungled her name.
    — Borys Kit, HollywoodReporter, 30 Sep. 2025
  • Authorities bungle the case but still arrest a maintenance worker for the killings.
    — Sandra Dallas, Denver Post, 19 Apr. 2026
  • Other missteps have amounted to six years of bungling the KCI discussion.
    — Steve Vockrodt and Lynn Horsley, kansascity.com, 25 June 2017
  • Having now bungled the Reed cast and his promise to Deb, Harry hits his old haunt to drink his sorrows away.
    — Nick Caruso, TVLine, 3 Jan. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bungle.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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