tumble
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: tŭmʹbəl
ipa: /ˈtʌmbl̩/
rhymes: -ʌmbəl
Forms: form: tumbles
form: tumbling
form: tumbled
form: tumbled
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.
Senses: examples: text: He who tumbles from a tower surely has a greater blow than he who slides from a molehill.
ref: 1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London:
text: “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.[…]”
ref: 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
text: 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.
ref: 1908, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows:
text: 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.
ref: 1945 September and October, C. Hamilton Ellis, “Royal Trains—V”, in Railway Magazine, page 250:
glosses: To fall end over end; to roll over and over.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1861, E. J. Guerin, Mountain Charley, page 42:
text: [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.
ref: 1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 125:
text: [A] surge of muddy water tore him free from his sandy nook and tumbled him down the gully.
ref: 2012, Max Overton, Horemheb:
glosses: To throw headlong.
glosses: To perform gymnastics such as somersaults, rolls, and handsprings.
examples: text: Share prices tumbled after the revelation about the company's impending failure.
glosses: To drop rapidly.
glosses: To smooth and polish (e.g. gemstones or pebbles) by means of a rotating tumbler.
synonyms: word: bump uglies
word: have sex
word: roll around
word: approach
word: cohabit
word: company
word: copulate
word: couple
word: engage in sex
word: exchange flesh
word: have intimate relations
word: have marital relations
word: have sex
word: have sexual relations
word: intercourse
word: know
word: know someone in the biblical sense
word: make love
word: mate
word: share a bed
word: sleep together
word: strain
word: bang
word: bauf
word: beat
word: bone
word: boff
word: boink
word: bonk
word: bop
word: bounce
word: breed
word: bump nasties
word: bump uglies
word: catch a dick
word: dance
word: discuss Uganda
word: dip one's pen in someone's inkwell
word: do it
word: do the deed
word: do the nasty
word: eff
word: engender
word: expletive deleted
word: feck
word: frack
word: frak
word: frick
word: frig
word: fuck
word: get busy
word: get down
word: get freaky
word: get it
word: get it on
word: get jiggy
word: get laid
word: get lucky
word: get one's dick wet
word: get one's end away
word: get one's freak on
word: get one's groove on
word: get one's leg over
word: get one's oats
word: get physical
word: get some
word: get the dirty water off one's chest
word: graft the forked tree
word: go all the way
word: haul one's ashes
word: have it away
word: have it off
word: hide the salami
word: hide the sausage
word: hide the wienie
word: hike the Appalachian Trail
word: hook up
word: hump
word: jig-jig
word: knock boots
word: lay pipe
word: lay the pipe
word: make it
word: make out
word: make the beast with two backs
word: make whoopee
word: meddle
word: ming
word: Netflix and chill
word: penetrate
word: pipe
word: pipe down
word: play
word: play hide the sausage
word: pound
word: rail
word: ride
word: rock and roll
word: roger
word: roll around
word: root
word: screw
word: see someone's etchings
word: sex
word: shag
word: shelve
word: show someone one's etchings
word: slap bellies
word: stick
word: tumble
glosses: To have sexual intercourse.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 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:
glosses: To move or rush in a headlong or uncontrolled way.
examples: text: to tumble a bed
synonyms: mess up
touse
glosses: To muss, to make disorderly; to tousle or rumple.
examples: text: Now it’s easy to purchase bitcoins on any number of mainstream markets and “tumble” them so that their point of purchase is obscured.
ref: 2019, Brian Merchant, “Click Here to Kill: The dark world of online murder markets”, in Harper’s Magazine, volume 2020, number January:
topics: business
cryptocurrencies
cryptocurrency
finance
glosses: To obscure the audit trail of funds by means of a tumbler.
examples: text: 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; […]
ref: 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor:
glosses: To comprehend; often in tumble to.
Derived terms: tumble down
tumble in
tumble on
tumble to
tumble together
tumble up
tumbling E chart
tumbling mat
tumbling mill