called Tumblers from their mode of baptism, which is by putting the person whilst kneeling head first under water.]
10. (old).—A street rowdy: early part of the eighteenth century: see quot.
1712. Steele, Spectator, 324. A third sort are the tumblers, whose office it is to set women on their heads.
Tumble-down, adj. phr. (colloquial).—Dilapidated,
ruinous,
rattletrap (q.v.).
1839. Longfellow, Hyperion, ii. 9. A tumble-down old Lutheran church.
1859. Kingsley, Geoffrey Hamlyn, iii. You will be doing injustice to this boy if you hang on here in this useless tumbledown old palace.
1863. Gaskell, Sylvia's Lovers, xxiv. T'oud tumbledown place is just a heap o' brick and mortar.
1881. Freeman, Venice, 340. Dirty-looking men assemble at the door of a tumble-down building.
1885. D. Teleg., 16 Nov. They came so low as to live in a tumble-down old house at Peckham.
Tummy, subs. (common).—The
stomach: also tum-tum; hence
(venery) tummy-tickling =
copulation: see Greens and
Ride.
Tump, verb. (American).—1. To
pull, to draw.
2. (venery).—To copulate; to give the push (q.v.); to poke (q.v.).
Tumptsner, subs. (provincial).—A
settler: e.g. 'That'll be a
tumptsner for the old gentleman.'
Tum-tum, subs. phr. (Indian and
Colonial).—A dog-cart.
See Tummy.
Tun, subs. (common).—1. A tippler:
see Lushington.
2. (Oxford Univ.).—At Pembroke a small silver cup containing half a pint; sometimes with a whistle handle, which cannot be blown till the cup is empty.
Tun-belly, subs. (old).—A fat,
round-bellied man; a pot-belly,
a corporation (q.v.). Hence
tun-bellied = paunchy, very
corpulent, bellied like a tun: cf.
tun-great (quot. 1383) = with a
circumference of the size of a tun.
[1383. Chaucer, Cant. Tales, 'Knights Tale,' 1996. Every piler the temple to sustene was tonne-gret.]
1550. Lever, Sermons [Arber], 119 [Oliphant, New Eng., i. 524. There are the phrases greedygut and tunne belyed].
1651. Cartwright, Royall Slave. Some drunken hymn I warrant you towards now, in the praise of their great huge, rowling, tunbellyed god Bacchus as they call him.
1687. Sedley, Bellamira. I must have no . . . tun-belly'd rogues, that fright chair-men from the house.
d. 1704. Brown, Works, iii. 152. He has swore to her by all that is good and sacred never to forgive the presumptuous wretch that should think irreverently of a double chin and a tun belly.
Tund, verb. (Winchester).—To
thrash; tunding = a thrashing.
1881. Pascoe, Everyday Life, etc. I never heard of any case in Eton like the tunding which, some years ago, brought our mother-school into disagreeable notice.
1883. Trollope, What I remember. It was the prefect of hall who ordered the infliction of a public tunding. . . . Some dozen or so of boys, who had the best capacities for the performance, were appointed by him for the purpose, and the whole assembly stood around the dais, while the hymn Te de profundis was sung. When all were thus assembled, and before the singers commenced, the culprit who had been sentenced to a tunding stepped
