TUMBLING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does tumbling mean? 

• TUMBLING (noun)
  The noun TUMBLING has 1 sense:

1. the gymnastic moves of an acrobat

  Familiarity information: TUMBLING used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TUMBLING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The gymnastic moves of an acrobat

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

acrobatics; tumbling

Hypernyms ("tumbling" is a kind of...):

gymnastic exercise; gymnastics (a sport that involves exercises intended to display strength and balance and agility)

Meronyms (parts of "tumbling"):

acrobatic feat; acrobatic stunt (a stunt performed by an acrobat)

Derivation:

tumble (do gymnastics, roll and turn skillfully)

 Context examples 

By this time, tumbling things in as they came, we had the jolly-boat loaded as much as we dared.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I forgot my bashfulness, and pegged away (no other word will express it) with all my might, tumbling over long words, pronouncing according to inspiration of the minute, and doing my very best.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But I saw, not the deck, but where the deck should have been, for it was buried beneath a wild tumbling of water.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

When midnight came, an uproar and noise of tumbling about was heard; at first it was low, but it grew louder and louder.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Mixing of dry ingredients by repetitive tumbling.

(Dry Powder Diffusion Mixing, NCI Thesaurus)

A process that removes water or volatile solvents from an agitated or tumbling bed of solids by relying on heat transfer from the equipment surface or a hot gas to the solid sample.

(Moving Bed Drying Method, NCI Thesaurus)

The sea is tumbling in over the shallows and the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the sea-mists drifting inland.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Hyperion (168 miles, 270 kilometers across) rotates chaotically, essentially tumbling unpredictably through space as it orbits Saturn.

(Cassini Prepares for Last Up-close Look at Hyperion, NASA)

Poor Brandon! he is quite smitten already, and he is very well worth setting your cap at, I can tell you, in spite of all this tumbling about and spraining of ankles.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Whereupon, the malicious rogue, watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly over my head, by which a dozen apples, each of them near as large as a Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit me on the back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my face; but I received no other hurt, and the dwarf was pardoned at my desire, because I had given the provocation.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)