tumble
Syllables: tum·ble/ˈtʌmbl̩/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Northern England/ˈtʊmbl̩/
tumble noun: a fall, especially end over end.
Noun
tumble (plural tumbles)
- A fall, especially end over end.
- I took a tumble down the stairs and broke my tooth.
- 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.2008, David Joutras, A Ghost in the World, page 55
- 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?1940, John Betjeman, Group Life: Letchworth
- 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
Verb
tumble (third-person singular simple present tumbles, present participle tumbling, simple past and past participle tumbled)
- 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.1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London
- Jack and Gill
Went up the hill,
To fetch a bottle of water;
Jack fell down,
And broke his crown,
And Gill came tumbling a'ter.1795, Gammer Gurton's Garland, or, The Nursery Parnassus, Stockton: R. Christopher, page 51
- 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.1861, E. J. Guerin, Mountain Charley, page 42
- [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.1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 125
- To perform gymnastics such as somersaults, rolls, and handsprings.
- To drop rapidly.
- Share prices tumbled after the revelation about the company's impending failure.
- To smooth and polish (e.g. gemstones or pebbles) by means of a rotating tumbler.
- To have sexual intercourse.
- Synonyms:
- bump uglies, have sex, roll around, approach, cohabit, common, company, copulate, couple, engage in sex
- 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...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
- To muss, to make disorderly; to tousle or rumple.
- to tumble a bed
- 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.2019, Brian Merchant, “Click Here to Kill: The dark world of online murder markets”, in Harper’s Magazine, volume 2020, number January
- 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; […]1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor
Proper noun capitalized: Tumble
Tumble
- A village in Llannon community, Carmarthenshire, Wales (OS grid ref SN5411).
tumble meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
tumble in Tamil
- வீழ்ச்சி, தகர்ந்து விழு
tumble in Urdu
- ڈھلکنا, ڈھیر بن جانا, لڑھکنا
tumble in Bengali
- পড়ে যাওয়া, গড়িয়ে যাওয়া
tumble in Malayalam
- വീഴുക, കീഴ്മേൽ മറിയുക, മലക്കം മറിയുക
More languagesFewer languages
- tumble in Kannada
- ಪಲ್ಟಿ, ಲಾಗ, ಬೀಳು, ಉರುಳು
Examples of tumble in a sentence
- 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:
- [A] surge of muddy water tore him free from his sandy nook and tumbled him down the gully.2012, Max Overton, Horemheb:
Synonyms of tumble
- bump uglies
- have sex
- roll around
- copulate
- couple
- engage in sex
- exchange flesh
- have intimate relations
- have marital relations
- have sexual relations
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of tumble
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | tumbles |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | tumbles |
| present participle | tumbling |
| past participle | tumbled |
| past | tumbled |
Origin of tumble
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-West Germanic *tumbōn, tūmōn, from Proto-Germanic *tumbōną, tūmōną (“to turn, rotate”). Cognate with Middle Dutch tumelen (whence Dutch tuimelen), Middle Low German tumelen, tummelen, German taumeln, Danish tumle, Swedish tumla, tumbla (“to tumble”), Faroese tumla, tumbla (“to walk heavily and noisily, stagger”).
Words formed from tumble
- give a tumble
- rough and tumble
- rumble-tumble
- take a tumble
- tumble-car
- tumble drier
- tumble dryer
- tumble home
- tumble motor
- tumble mustard
- tumbler
- tumble ringwing
- tumble thistle
- tumble-turd
- tumble turn
- atumble
- betumble
- detumble
- overtumble
- retumble
- tu
- tumblebug
- tumble down
- tumbledung
- tumblehome
- tumble in
- tumblelog
- tumble on
- tumbleset
- tumblesome
- tumblestone
- tumble to
- tumble together
- tumble up
- tumbling E chart
- tumblingly
- tumbling mat
- tumbling mill
- untumbled
Phrases with tumble
- tumble dry
- tumble dried
- tumble dries
- tumble turns
- took a tumble
- tumble driers
- tumble dryers
- tumble drying
- tumble motors
- taken a tumble
- takes a tumble
- taking a tumble
1 more phrasesFewer phrases
Words that rhyme with tumble
Questions about tumble
- What does tumble mean?
- Tumble means a fall, especially end over end.
- What is tumble in Tamil?
- Tumble in Tamil is வீழ்ச்சி, தகர்ந்து விழு. See Tumble meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use tumble in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is tumble?
- Tumble can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce tumble?
- Tumble is pronounced /ˈtʌmbl̩/.
- What is the plural of tumble?
- The plural of tumble is tumbles.
Words near tumble in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tumble (page history and authors); Tumble (page history and authors); tumble (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tumble (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tumble (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tumble (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tumble (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-tumble.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tumble.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tumble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.