# tumble
## English
### Etymology

From Middle English tumblen (“to fall over and over again, tumble”), frequentative of Middle English tumben (“to fall, leap, dance”), from Old English tumbian, from Proto-Germanic *tūmōną (“to turn, rotate”). Cognate with Middle Dutch tumelen (whence Dutch tuimelen), Middle Low German tumelen, tummelen, German taumeln and Danish tumle.

### Pronunciation

* enPR: tŭmʹbəl, IPA: /ˈtʌmbl̩/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Rhymes: -ʌmbəl
* Hyphenation: tum‧ble

### Noun

tumble (plural tumbles)
* A fall, especially end over end.
    I took a tumble down the stairs and broke my tooth.
* A disorderly heap.
** 2008, David Joutras, A Ghost in the World, page 55:When at last we stopped in a tumble of bodies on the grass, laughing, and in Dad's case, out of breath, we were like little kids (I mean 5 or 6! After all I am 12!) at the end of a playground session.
* (informal) An act of sexual intercourse.
** 1940, John Betjeman, Group Life: Letchworth:Wouldn't it be jolly now, / To take our Aertex panters off / And have a jolly tumble in / The jolly, jolly sun?
** 1979, Martine, Sexual Astrology, page 219:When you've just had a tumble between the sheets and are feeling rumpled and lazy, she may want to get up so she can make the bed.

#### Derived terms

* give a tumble
* rough and tumble
* rumble-tumble
* take a tumble
* tumble-car
* tumble drier
* tumble dryer
* tumble home
* tumble motor
* tumbler
* tumble ringwing
* tumble thistle
* tumble-turd
* tumble turn

#### Translations
### Verb

tumble (third-person singular simple present tumbles, present participle tumbling, simple past and past participle tumbled)
* (intransitive) To fall end over end; to roll over and over.
** 1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London:He who tumbles from a tower surely has a greater blow than he who slides from a molehill.
** 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:“Heavens!” exclaimed Nina, “the blue-stocking and the fogy!—and yours are pale blue, Eileen!—you’re about as self-conscious as Drina—slumping there with your hair tumbling à la Mérode! Oh, it's very picturesque, of course, but a straight spine and good grooming is better. […]”
** 1908, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows:The two animals tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get inside, and heard the door shut behind them with great joy and relief.
** 1945 September and October, C. Hamilton Ellis, “Royal Trains—V”, in Railway Magazine, page 250:Before so many of Europe's crowns came tumbling off the heads of their royal owners, Continental Europe could show a rich variety in the matter of royal trains.
* (transitive) To throw headlong.
** 1861, E. J. Guerin, Mountain Charley, page 42:His hand went after his revolver almost that instant mine did. I was a second too quick for him, for my shot tumbled him from his mule just as his ball whistled harmlessly past by my head.
** 1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 125:[Spillikins] was played with ivory or bone pieces about five inches long with assorted ends. These were tumbled out of a box into a pile on the table and each player, using a specially designed tool, would try in turn to remove a spillikin without upsetting the others in the pile.
** 2012, Max Overton, Horemheb:[A] surge of muddy water tore him free from his sandy nook and tumbled him down the gully.
* (intransitive) To perform gymnastics such as somersaults, rolls, and handsprings.
* (intransitive) To drop rapidly.
    Share prices tumbled after the revelation about the company's impending failure.
* (transitive) To smooth and polish (e.g. gemstones or pebbles) by means of a rotating tumbler.
* (intransitive, informal) To have sexual intercourse.
    Synonyms: bump uglies, have sex, roll around; see also Thesaurus:copulate
* (intransitive) To move or rush in a headlong or uncontrolled way.
** 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XXVII, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 129:Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question ; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner.
* To muss, to make disorderly; to tousle or rumple.
    Synonyms: mess up, touse
    to tumble a bed
* (cryptocurrencies) To obscure the audit trail of funds by means of a tumbler.
** 2019, Brian Merchant, “Click Here to Kill: The dark world of online murder markets”, in Harper’s Magazine‎, volume 2020, number January:Now it’s easy to purchase bitcoins on any number of mainstream markets and “tumble” them so that their point of purchase is obscured.
* (obsolete, UK, slang) To comprehend; often in tumble to.
** 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor:Speaking of this language, a costermonger said to me: "The Irish can't tumble to it anyhow; the Jews can tumble better, but we're their masters. Some of the young salesmen at Billingsgate understand us, — but only at Billingsgate; […]

#### Derived terms

* tumble down
* tumble in
* tumble on
* tumble to
* tumble together
* tumble up
* tumbling E chart
* tumbling mat
* tumbling mill