Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use tumble in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Tumble means a fall, especially end over end. Example: “I took a tumble down the stairs and broke my tooth.”

Examples of tumble by meaning

nounA fall, especially end over end.

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

nounA 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!2008, David Joutras, A Ghost in the World, page 55

nounAn act of sexual intercourse.

  • 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.1979, Martine, Sexual Astrology, page 219

verbTo fall end over end; to roll over and over.

  • “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!1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC
  • 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.1908, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
  • 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.1945 September and October, C. Hamilton Ellis, “Royal Trains—V”, in Railway Magazine, page 250

verbTo throw headlong.

  • 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.1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 125

verbTo drop rapidly.

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

verbTo muss, to make disorderly; to tousle or rumple.

  • to tumble a bed

verbTo 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.2019, Brian Merchant, “Click Here to Kill: The dark world of online murder markets”, in Harper’s Magazine, volume 2020, number January

More sentences with tumble

  • Prices have tumbled on the stock market.From the entry stock market
  • Unflighted darts have a tendency to tumble.From the entry unflighted
  • Prince Charles spent the night in the hospital after he took a tumble off his horse yesterday while playing polo and briefly lost consciousness.From the entry take a tumble
  • He finally tumbled to our secret.From the entry tumble to
  • That was a slightly bigger drop in earnings than analysts had forecast, and net income tumbled 37%.2025 October 23, Chris Isidore, “Tesla’s best quarter of year isn’t enough to impress investors. Because they know it won’t last”, in CNN…. From the entry earnings miss
  • The natural question after Tesla's recent tumble: At what point could the Technoking be margin called?2023 January 11, Tom Maloney, Dana Hull, “Elon Musk Might Never Be the World's Richest Person Again”, in Bloomberg, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry margin-call
  • The deadbolt tumbled, and Jess cracked the door, wielding a plunger.2019 February 7, M. C. Vaughan, The Reluctant Princess, Champagne Book Group, →ISBN, page 55. From the entry potty dance
  • Snip, snip, snip, I went, and watched it tumble to the floor.2017, Alan McMonagle, Ithaca, London: Picador, →ISBN, page 283. From the entry hair today, gone tomorrow
  • She had no control of her body as she tumbled downhill.2012, John Branch, “Snow Fall : The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek”, in New York Times. From the entry control
  • Though most often made of plastic, roly-poly tumble toys were commonly found in mid-century toy boxes.2012, Jill Hamor, “Toys [Roly-poly Duck]”, in Lynn Koolish, editor, Storybook Toys: Sew 16 Projects from Once upon a Time, Lafayette…. From the entry roly-poly
  • A great Tumblr post is reblogged again and again; it tumbles across continents and generations.2012 March 4, Tom Meltzer, “The 10 funniest Tumblrs”, in The Guardian. From the entry reblog
  • A fall of hair tumbled down one side of her body like a veil.2010, Winter Pennington, Witch Wolf. From the entry fall
  • The soldiers' limp bodies tumbled to the water with mighty splashes.2010, Hachette Assorted Authors, Scoundrels, Monsters, and Special Circumstances: Orbit October-December 2010, Orbit, →ISBN. From the entry twock
  • NEW environmentally friendly Australian fridges can borrow electricity from the airconditioner or tumble dryer across the road.2009 January 14, Peter Jean, “New fridges grid and share it”, in Herald Sun. From the entry airconditioner
  • For a moment those words almost erased the dislocation of my tumble.2009, Alan Robbins, Following the Trail of Blood. From the entry soothy
  • I tripped over my heavy boots and tumbled to the ground.2008, Donna Milner, After River, London: Quercus, →ISBN, page 63. From the entry gibbled
  • The flitter tumbled from the shimmering throat of the wormhole transit route from Port Sol to Earthport.1994, Stephen Baxter, Ring, →ISBN, page 43. From the entry flitter
  • The milkjugs tumbled out, set after set, sailing in graceful arcs toward the dam’s facade.1989, Edward Abbey, Hayduke Lives!, New York, N.Y.; Boston, Mass.: Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company, published 1990, →ISBN, page…. From the entry milkjug
  • Heave they did, all unopposed, and tumbled arselong when the bar came about.1981, John Barth, Giles goat-boy. From the entry arselong
  • A barefooter can perform such tricks as one-foot barefoot, tumble turns, crossing wakes, and toehold barefoot.1974, Kenneth Stephens, Waterskiing, page 91. From the entry barefooter
  • Set amongst a tumbled mass of mountains rising to the snow line, it is not easily accessible.[1971, Rewi Alley, “In and around Canton in November 1970”, in Eastern Horizon, volume X, number 1, Hong Kong: Eastern Horizon Press…. From the entry dali
  • Much tunnelling and many bridges will be necessary in the tumbled Calabrian terrain.1964 November, “Beyond the Channel: Italy: New railways are authorised”, in Modern Railways, page 360. From the entry Calabrian
  • Whereas a man failing in marriage has nothing to break the tumble.1959, Peter De Vries, chapter 14, in The Tents of Wickedness, Boston: Little Brown, page 210. From the entry aerialist
  • I tumbled on the truth by the merest accident, when I’d pretty nearly chucked the whole job.”1910, Edith Wharton, “The Bolted Door”, in Tales of Men and Ghosts, New York: Scribner, page 69. From the entry tumble on
  • This trace fossil captured the last minutes of a horseshoe crab’s life when it tumbled to the bottom of a lagoon.2017 May 17, Hanneke Meijer, The Guardian. From the entry mortichnium
  • Rescueless himself, he tumbled to the boards.2014, Thomas Keneally, Woman of the Inner Sea. From the entry rescueless
  • "Thoughts tumbled through my mind as Tanaya slowly got her stuff, just trying to be irky to Mr.2014, Elizabeth Karre, Calling the Shots. From the entry irky
  • A tumble would have had serious consequences.2014, Malcolm James Thomson, TheodoraLand. From the entry mesonoxian
  • To cap it all, a tumble onto a passing echidna has left her with a bottomful of prickles.2012, Amanda O'Shea, Poppy and Max. From the entry bottomful
  • First, they call for gratitude to the courageous women and men who nonviolently toppled dictators and tumbled walls.2010, Anne Montgomery, “Resistance to U.S. Massacre in Iraq”, in Arthur J. Laffin, Anne Montgomery, editors, Swords into Plowshares. From the entry beat one's swords into ploughshares

Meaning of tumble

  1. noun A fall, especially end over end.
  2. noun A disorderly heap.
  3. noun An act of sexual intercourse.

Full definition of tumble

Questions about tumble in a sentence

How do you use tumble in a sentence?
Tumble is used as a noun and verb. For example: “I took a tumble down the stairs and broke my tooth.”
What is a short sentence with tumble?
“to tumble a bed”
What does tumble mean?
Tumble means a fall, especially end over end.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tumble (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use tumble in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/tumble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.