tumble

plural tumbles

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.

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

3. informalAn 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

   1 more example

   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

present singular third person tumbles · participle present tumbling · participle past tumbled · past tumbled

1. intransitiveTo 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

   4 more examples

   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

   “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.[…]”

   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

2. transitiveTo throw headlong.

   [A] surge of muddy water tore him free from his sandy nook and tumbled him down the gully.

   2012, Max Overton, Horemheb

   2 more examples

   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

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

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

5. transitiveTo smooth and polish (e.g. gemstones or pebbles) by means of a rotating tumbler.
6. informalintransitiveTo have sexual intercourse.

   Synonyms: bump uglies, have sex, roll around, approach, cohabit, common, company, copulate

7. intransitiveTo move or rush in a headlong or uncontrolled way.

   1 more example

   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.

   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

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

   to tumble a bed

   Synonyms: mess up, touse

9. businessTo 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

10. UKobsoleteslangTo 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

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