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say it: TUHM-buhl
tumble is a verb and noun meaning "fall down, as if collapsing". It carries 13 recorded senses.
roll over and over, back and forth
fly around
“The clothes tumbled in the dryer”
“rising smoke whirled in the air”
fall apart
“the building crumbled after the explosion”
“Negotiations broke down”
put clothes in a tumbling barrel, where they are whirled about in hot air, usually with the purpose of drying
“Wash in warm water and tumble dry”
suffer a sudden downfall, overthrow, or defeat
an acrobatic feat of rolling or turning end over end
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for tumble come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.