tumble

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; and German taumeln.

noun

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. (informal) 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

1. (intransitive) To fall end over end; to roll over and over.
   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. (intransitive) To perform gymnastics such as somersaults, rolls, and handsprings.
3. (intransitive) To drop rapidly.
   Share prices tumbled after the revelation about the company's impending failure.
4. (transitive) To smoothe and polish, e.g., gemstones or pebbles, by means of a rotating tumbler.
5. (intransitive, informal) To have sexual intercourse.
6. (intransitive) To move or rush in a headlong or uncontrolled way.
7. To muss, to make disorderly; to tousle or rumple.
   to tumble a bed
8. (cryptocurrencies) 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
9. (obsolete, UK, slang) 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