Tumbling ppl. a.

[f. as prec. + -ING².] That tumbles, in various senses of the verb; falling; tossing; rolling headlong; also fig.

c. 1374.  Chaucer, Boeth., III. pr. ix. 67 (Camb. MS.). Trowesthow þat ther be any thing in thise erthely mortal towmblynge thinges?

1509.  Hawes, Past. Pleas. (Percy Soc.), 131. Stere well the frayle tombling barge.

c. 1620.  Z. Boyd, Zion’s Flowers (1855), 109. Where tumbling billowes bath the very sky.

1638.  Junius, Paint. Ancients, 306. A tumbling and wallowing horse.

1760–72.  H. Brooke, Fool of Qual. (1809), II. 128. All that I owed came like a tumbling house upon me.

1837.  W. Irving, Capt. Bonneville, II. ix. 130. Down the ravine of a tumbling stream, the commencement of some future river.

1873.  Black, Pr. Thule, vi. This tumbling mass of dark stones standing high over the green hollows.

  Hence Tumblingly adv., in a tumbling manner.

1620.  Thomas, Lat. Dict., Volutatim,… rollingly, tumblingly, tossingly.

1922.  Mary Dixon Thayer, Songs of Youth, 20.