rough and tumble
rough and tumble is the alternative form of rough-and-tumble.
Meaning of rough-and-tumble
Noun
rough-and-tumble (plural rough-and-tumbles)
- Rough activity; fighting or brawling; a fight.
- "You played Rugger for Ireland, did you not? You don't mind a possible rough-and-tumble, do you?" Malone grinned over the receiver.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
- An environment of rough activity.
- A person who characteristically engages in such activity.
- This will appear a very tedious process to some of our rough-and-tumbles.1854, William Chorlton, “The Culture of Celery”, in Luther Tucker, editor, The Horticulturist, and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste, page 166
Forms of rough and tumble
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | rough and tumbles |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more rough and tumble |
| superlative | most rough and tumble |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | rough and tumbles |
| present participle | rough and tumbling |
| past participle | rough and tumbled |
| past | rough and tumbled |
Questions about rough and tumble
- What is rough and tumble the alternative form of?
- Rough and tumble is the alternative form of rough-and-tumble.
Words near rough and tumble in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rough and tumble (page history and authors); rough-and-tumble (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “rough and tumble.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rough_and_tumble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.