Tumbril

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈtÊŒmbɹɪl/

Alternative forms

• tumbrel

Origin

From Old French tumberel (in Anglo-Latin tumberellus), from tomber, tumber ("to fall").

Full definition of tumbril

Noun

1. A kind of medieval torture device, later associated with a cucking-stool.
2. A cart which opens at the back to release its load.
• 1800, The Times, 17 Mar 1800, p.3 col. B:They then confined the Dean, while they rifled the house of every valuable article, as well as plate and money; all that was portable they loaded on Mr. Carleton’s own tumbril, to which they harnessed his horse ....
• 1994, Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing:They’d rigged a makeshift tent of sheeting over the little tumbril of a cart and they’d put up a sign at the front that gave her history and the number of people she was known to have eaten.
• 1997, Don DeLillo, Underworld:This is a sixteenth-century work done by a Flemish master, Pieter Bruegel, and it is called The Triumph of Death (…). He studies the tumbrel filled with skulls.
3. A cart used to carry condemned prisoners to their death, especially to the guillotine during the French Revolution.
• 1848, The Times, 26 Jun 1848, p.4 col. B:It is now ascertained that the tumbrel and the torches which figured in the massacre-scene of the 23d of February were prepared beforehand ....
• 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 370:If there would be former freemasons on the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror, they would be numbered too in the ranks of the émigré armies and counter-revolutionary Chouan rebels, and in tumbrils bound for the guillotine.
4. (UK, obsolete) A basket or cage of osiers, willows, or the like, to hold hay and other food for sheep.