Other forms: rumbling, rumbles, rumbled
To rumble is to make a long, low, rolling sound — the kind you feel in your chest before you name it. Thunder a few miles off, a lorry crossing a bridge, an empty stomach at eleven in the morning.
The noun works the same way: the rumble of traffic, a distant rumble, a rumble of laughter down the table. Things rumble along, past and through, and the word carries the movement and the noise together — the train rumbled out of the station. British informal English has a second use with no sound in it at all: to rumble someone is to see through them, so 'we were rumbled' means we were found out. In American slang a rumble is a street fight between gangs, and it still smells of the 1950s. Keep it apart from grumble, which is complaining out loud.
1verbrumbleTo make a deep, low, rolling sound.
“Thunder rumbled somewhere behind the hills.”
2verbmoveTo move along making a deep, low sound.
“An empty lorry rumbled past and the windows shook.”
3nouncontinuousA deep, low, continuous sound.
“You could hear the rumble of the motorway from the garden.”
4verbuseIn British informal use, to see through someone or discover what they are hiding.
“They rumbled him at passport control.”
5nounstreetIn American slang, a street fight between gangs.
“The film ends with a rumble under the bridge.”
Rumble comes from Middle English rumblen, a repeating form of romen, 'to roar'. It is a word built by imitation, and the family proves it: Dutch rommelen, Low German rummeln, German rumpeln and Danish rumle all mean much the same and all copy the same noise. The word rumbles.
Middle English
rumblen
English, today
rumble
Built from
From Middle English rumblen, romblen, rummelyn, frequentative form of romen (“to roar”), equivalent to rome le. Cognate with Dutch rommelen (“to rumble”), Low German rummeln (“to rumble”), German rumpeln (“to be noisy”), Danish rumle (“to rumble”), all of imitative origin. Compare typologically громи́ть, погро́м, разгро́м (akin to гром, греме́ть, громыха́ть). Also compare гро́хнуть (akin to гро́хот).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Everyday Verbs, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 4 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word