tumble

name

1. A village in Llannon community, Carmarthenshire, Wales (OS grid ref SN5411).

noun

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.

1. A fall, especially end over end.

   “I took a tumble down the stairs and broke my tooth.”

2. A disorderly heap.

   “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.”

3. An act of sexual intercourse.

   “Wouldn't it be jolly now, / To take our Aertex panters off / And have a jolly tumble in / The jolly, jolly sun?”

   “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.”

verb

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.

1. To fall end over end; to roll over and over.

   “He who tumbles from a tower surely has a greater blow than he who slides from a molehill.”

   ““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.[…]””

2. To throw headlong.

   “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.”

   “[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.”

3. To perform gymnastics such as somersaults, rolls, and handsprings.
4. To drop rapidly.

   “Share prices tumbled after the revelation about the company's impending failure.”

5. To smooth and polish (e.g. gemstones or pebbles) by means of a rotating tumbler.
6. To have sexual intercourse.
7. To move or rush in a headlong or uncontrolled way.

   “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.”

8. To muss, to make disorderly; to tousle or rumple.

   “to tumble a bed”

9. To obscure the audit trail of funds by means of a tumbler.

   “Now it’s easy to purchase bitcoins on any number of mainstream markets and “tumble” them so that their point of purchase is obscured.”

10. To comprehend; often in tumble to.

    “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; […]”