tumble on

English

Pronunciation

Audio (AU) (file)

Verb

tumble on (third-person singular simple present tumbles on, present participle tumbling on, simple past and past participle tumbled on)

(transitive, idiomatic) To accidentally encounter (a person or situation).
- 1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “chapter 17”, in The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, OCLC 904345282, page 148:
  “I’m luck to have fallen upon you, Kemp. You must help me. Fancy tumbling on you just now! I’m in a devilish scrape […] ”
- 1910, Edith Wharton, “The Bolted Door” in Tales of Men and Ghosts, New York: Scribner, p. 69,
  “He murdered the man all right. I tumbled on the truth by the merest accident, when I’d pretty nearly chucked the whole job.”
- 1931, E. Phillips Oppenheim, “What Sir Stephen Forgot” in Sinners Beware, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1932, p. 158, (first published as “In the Strongroom” in Collier’s Weekly, 11 April, 1931),
  “If it isn’t Peter Hames?” he cried. “God bless my soul! They told us over in New York that you were living in these parts, but to tumble on you like this! Why, we only landed here two minutes ago. I call this fine.”

Synonyms

chance upon
happen upon
stumble across